


Storms

by HaephestusCrex



Category: The Walking Dead (Comics), The Walking Dead (TV), The Walking Dead (Telltale Video Game)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Multi, Reader-Insert, Reader-Interactive
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 17:22:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 36,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11764719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HaephestusCrex/pseuds/HaephestusCrex
Summary: ' “Hold – hold the fuck on here, I didn’t agree to be an intimidation tactic, I’m just helping out. I don’t want to be roped into…whatever the fuck this is. I have people waiting west of Virginia – I can’t just…” the protests die in your throat as Jared rather flippantly raises his rifle at you.Covered in guts or not, he doesn’t seem to like not being in control.It seems you have a tendency to end up in the wrong place at the right time. There's nothing charming about you - you're a rotten, cantankerous cunt and frankly, nobody can quite understand why Negan likes you at all."We'll make a Savior out of you yet," '(( Drastically Canon Divergent/AU written on request for Sorine ))





	1. One if by land, and two if by sea

**Author's Note:**

> ((Started writing this for friends but thought it was too good not* to shitpost on here too, so here we go, the hope is that it'll inspire me to continue more and kick writer's block in the ass... and depression idk. This is the longest I've been sober enough to write in a while too, hence sporadic updates of "Thirteen" and slow progress on my other stuff. Anyways, read and review))

 

Storms ||

**CHAPTER ONE**

_WEST VIRGINIA_

_“ONE IF BY LAND, AND TWO IF BY SEA.”_

 

 

“You should put something warmer on,” his voice had long since become agitating to you, even if he meant you well. A man was riding with you, attached to your back, the pair of you quietly making your way through the brush which felt like it had no end.

 

“Shush, I’m sweating enough trying to keep the bloody horse on a straight path, the little shits bolted twice already, and I’ve got you hanging on me like a backpack,” your voice all but snaps. The man turned his head to look at you, his name is Harry Darling, a name which – you jokingly said, sounded like the world’s shittiest draw for superhero names. He wasn’t much to look at, mousy features, sloped shoulders and a sort of weedy demeanour, so it’s a fucking surprise when it’s always Darling who chooses to ride out with you when you first began doing runs for your old group. Now it’s just you two. You’re not even sure why he’s still here, to be honest.

 

As if on cue, the horse begins shaking its head and trying to veer off, forcing you to pull the reigns sharply and keep it going up a beaten trail path. The horse had no right to complain, whinnying and neighing the way that it was, like it could sense something off in the atmosphere. As far as who was in better shape, yourself or the horse, it was easily the horse. It was much more willing to eat questionable items than either you, or Darling were.

 

“A storm’s coming. Horses don’t like storms,” said Darling. “Can sense the electricity in the air, I reckon, they don’t like it.”

 

“Did you learn that in your _equestrian care_ classes, posh?” you snap, mostly because Darling has been dropping ‘helpful hints’ for the better part of four days and you’re quite sick of it – sick of him – to be honest. “I can’t do anything about the fucking weather, can I?”

 

“We should tie them to a tree and take a breather, or find a building or something, if bad weather’s coming, we shouldn’t be stuck in it,” he looks at you with a sense of quiet, misplaced awe as you shake your head and ride forward. If you ride without pause, you can make it back to Idris’s outpost with some supplies and get some medicine in trade for it. Pollen season was coming, and you’d prefer to function without sneezing every few moments and having your eyes swell up and body run down. You’re ambitious, and you ride like nothing frightens you. Darling envies that, because he had come to fear so much.

 

“Ride,” your voice is harsh, and gritty to his ears.

_‘You used to be such a sweet girl,’_ Darling mused. He remembered when you kept your hair tied up messily and used to run around Atlanta International Airport, chasing some of the smaller boys – Toby and Christian. He couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment you changed, he just watched you become impatient, angry and bitter. Impatient with how little your old community seemed to be adapting, watching as people got themselves killed over and over every time they tried to leave without the marshal or one of the security agents. Angry at what people were becoming, and then finally, bitter with the ending result.

 

The horse suddenly jerks forward, and bolts without warning. Pressing your body forward against its mane, you grip the sides of the horse’s thick neck tightly and scream at Darling to hold onto you as hard as he can. He doesn’t need to be told twice.

 

Darling screams into your back, clenching and sinking his fingers into your torso. He’s muffling all manner of colourful swear words into the soiled slew of material that draped off your body, holding onto you for dear life. Combined with how childish he tends to be, and how much he’s come to rely on you, it’s very easy to forget that Darling is a full twenty years older than you and well into his 40s.

 

Something spooked Styx – the horse – and you highly doubted it was some mumbo-jumbo “I feels the storm a-brewin’ in ma bones!” malarkey. Turning your head, you wince as headlights start appearing through the thick brush of trees.

 

Of course. People. Styx was at a point in the apocalypse that he was far more frightened of the living than the dead, though both would probably take an opportunity to shear what slim meat and sinew they could from the skinny horse, it had come to associate vehicles and the living with danger, and rightfully so.

 

“Shit, we’ve got people,” Darling cursed under his breath. “-Can’t tell if they’re Frontier or what but I don’t think we should stick around to find out,”.

 

The sound of on-foot stamping began to echo from another direction, forcing you to jerk the reign violently to the left, bucking your ankles against Styx to get him bolting again.

 

“Halt!” – a loud voice calls out, a masculine one from behind the brush, before you realise that the trucks which were previously behind you were now also turning left to cut you off. Cursing, you turned back around and opted to go straight forward. There’s not much choice left, and Styx probably doesn’t have the energy to run constantly with how thin the feedings have been, but there’s no other choice.

“Stop where you are and keep your weapons sheathed!” the voice calls again, it’s a thick, dark sort of voice that manages to echo even over the sounds of panic, dull engines and snapping twigs.

 

Whoever these people are, you’re drastically out-numbered. It’s a situation you’re plenty familiar with, so with some reluctance, you slow the horse and turn to the source of the noise, dropping the reign and raising both of your hands up so that they were nowhere in reach of a weapon. You felt Darling peel himself off your back and do something similar.

 

“Shit,” you hissed – elbowing Darling as you raise your arms up.  “Don’t say anything stupid – let me talk, okay? Or just, shit, just don’t say anything!”

 

Predicting his penchant for landing you in messes, you begged him to keep his mouth shut as figures began to emerge from behind the trees. It was like something out of a movie, you mused – or what you remembered of movies anyway, the way they all came out in unison like that with rifles at the ready.

 

Four horses come into view at first, and you’re briefly struck with surprise. You’re not sure why it’s surprising really, of course there’s more than one horse in America – you’d taken Styx from a ranch in rural Atlanta after all, but it’d been a long time since you’d seen anyone else on horseback.

 

Their horses compared to Styx were much more well fed, they didn’t have that faint ring of emaciation about them and quite frankly, they were worlds apart from the horror show that your presence represented. Your eyes flitted to the rifles owned by the riders – they all seemed heavy duty, and they were all sporting a thick black body armour which must do wonders for getting through shamblers but must be utterly boiling under the Virginia heat, that’s for sure.

 

There’s a man leading the four horsemen because he rides ahead of them when they all emerge to show their faces. You can see some of them blanch visibly at the sight of you, Darling and Styx. There’s a reason that you’ve been able to navigate solo for so long, and it shows immediately upon setting eyes on you.

 

“You two,” his voice softens a bit, but he’s clearly wary and somehow stamping down the horror that boiled in the base of his gut at the sight of you.

 

“You’ve been hunting in these parts a while – we’ve had some reports, and, we’ve been looking for you,”

 

Fuck, that couldn’t be good, unless they were one of Idris’s lot, this was never good. But you didn’t know Idris to deal in horses and body armour nor did you expect any of his trading partners to be this far out. There was a reason he’d sent you out on this solo mission – it’s because he didn’t want to spare a team of good runners when all he needed was one _exceptional_ one. You.

 

“Well, I don’t know what you expected to find,” you decide to say, before Darling decides to open his mouth and say something ridiculous like ‘we come in peace’ or ‘please be gentle’. These people were older than you, this leader certainly. Just looking at his wrinkled face and sagging jowl line you could put him at his later fifties, but he wasn’t ugly, not by any stretch.

 

“We were just passing through, heading out of here now, actually. So if it’s all the same to you, we’d rather just be on our merry way,” you pick your words evenly and carefully, focusing intensely on the older man’s face for any sign of hostility. The whole situation felt hostile anyway, total military encirclement did not breed for a friendly chat, conventionally speaking, so right now it was entirely your self-preservation sense talking.

 

“There’s a whole lot of empty from here in most directions and you’re not looking like you’re faring so well. Please, it seems you’ve mistaken this for something more….hostile than it is,” the man raised his hand and did an odd gesture.

 

Just like that, the guns raised at you were lowered, and he was smiling, albeit warily, as many of his fellow riders were able to pull their eyes up from your horse.

 

You don’t blame them, from the outside, you look horrifying. Like a nightmare brought to flesh.

 

“There was a hoard that it looks like you...may be acquainted with, that is being thinned out by some allies of ours. You wouldn’t want to be in the crossfire, would you? I apologise if their trucks startled you,”

 

Okay. So that explained the trucks, you breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that there was in fact a small hoard south east of here that you’d trotted through agonisingly slowly, and one look at the horse and how you chose to ride solo through The Collapse told him you were more than prepared to weave through the dead.

 

“When we get word of survivors washing up, especially alone, we do our best to make sure they have a point of refuge. There isn’t a lot out here, you must know as well as most of us that it can be months before you see a living soul,” he glanced appreciatively at your surrendered hands but realised it must be awkward to have them raised like this, it felt vaguely like being held-up, and he acknowledged it.

 

“At ease, you can both put your hands down,” he rides forward slowly, leaving his men drenched in poorly smothered disgust as they remained fixated on Styx.

 

“We mean you no harm,” there’s something odd about the way the man speaks, you can’t put your finger on it, but It almost feels more like it’s out of a storybook than it does natural dialogue. Still, besides Idris and Darling, you don’t have that much in the way of conversational company. Maybe this is just how some survivors talked now? Who were you to judge anymore, you rode alone with Darling so much that it’s hard to tell what constitutes as normal anymore.

 

“But there are plenty of others out there who might, and it isn’t safe for a young couple to be out in this,” he frowns in concern, and a spluttering noise leaves you before you can stop it.

 

“We’re not a couple,” you blurt out before you can stop yourself. “He’s just my accompaniment,” well, in truth, he’s your friend – and even without turning around you can practically sense Darling rolling his eyes at your back.

 

Ah, so that’s what it is. He predicts your age young, and you two to be lost lovers or something, and the emaciated state of Styx and his visible ribs doesn’t help.

 

He glances down at your horse finally, and up at you, and frowns.

 

“I see, but the point remains. I’m sure your horror show puts off a fair few unsightly folk out there but we’ve been ordered to find you. Your movements around these parts have been known for a while, and rather than sit here and remain uneasy, I’ve been tasked with passing open invite to you and your….” He slowed down, looking for a word as his eyes flickered to Darling “-Compatriot.”

 

That did it, he definitely isn’t talking like a normal person, so instantly your guard is up. With a promise of a storm looming though, and dark clouds actually beginning to form, much to your annoyance and Darling’s ensured “I was right,” speech, you would need to get indoors…somewhere or ride through it until Idris’s Outpost came to view. That’d be hard, being that the noises storms made would make it too dangerous and frighten Styx as it is, a horse that’s already starving. This mysterious man is right too, there’s a whole lot of nothing in most directions from here, so there isn’t a lot of choice with the bad weather looming.

 

You glance down at your attire and your horse, before acquiescing, even though every muscle inside of you felt like it was a tightly wound coil, ready to spring the moment that these people turned out to be bad news. Most people were bad news. You were looking at this from a self-preservation view sure, but you weren’t the only one. You’ve been here a while, executing Idris’s orders in promise of bounty reward, and if someone had picked up on your movements, it stands to reason that from their own self-preservation point of view, they’d be uneasy.

 

Considering the “horror show,” that you presented, it’s a wonder you’re not shot on sight often.

 

It’s not that Styx is so emaciated it’s shocking or that there is anything particularly scary about you, but it’s how you present yourself. Both you and Darling have shawls around you that are draped in tenterhooks and stained in various tones of burgundy depending where on the coloured shawls, blood had dried. Attached by fish wire are little bits of flesh. Rotten to the core, but you’ve long since got used to the smell, you don’t even detect it anymore. The aim is to stink as much possible. It’s walker guts. Lots of them. The kind of smell doesn’t wash away either, not when it’s this soaked in and there’s actual organs to speak of, solidly kept in place no matter the weather until they rot so much they cannot be held to hooks anymore, and you need to gut a few fresher shamblers.

 

 _‘Fucking hell’ –_ the older man barely swallows his bile as he looks at the fish wire that dangles closest to your neck ‘ _-is that a fucking ear?’ –_ and you’re wearing it like a pendant – but he does his best to drag his eyes up from it and maintain a cool demeanour.

 

The horse is much worse, there’s more ground to cover. The saddle is fitted with a blanket which has more hooks and fish wire, so either side is draped in an array of long, almost sausage-like meat that reminded the horsemen of a butchery until they looked closely at it and saw it for what it was. Uncoiled intestines – draped down the side of the horse from both sides, and the blanket it rested on, also stained deeply with dead blood.

 

They smelt you long before they saw you, and your visage is a casually terrifying one, and sentry reports had you logged as _a girl with an organ horse._

 

He could see this was no exaggeration.

 

“Who’re you?” you ask sharply, “-I understand this looks…worrisome to outsiders, but understand I don’t just ride off with strangers often, they’re more risky than most of the dead fuckers. So I’ll ask you this, who’re you? Who’re your people? Who spotted us? I’m not keen to go anywhere until you tell me that,” there’s an underlying threat in your tone even if it’s pointless chest beating due to being woefully outnumbered, but it doesn’t go amiss.

 

The man chuckled as though you weren’t accusing his intentions of being impure, because in truth he expected nothing less. It was a dangerous world to be in now

 

“You’re aware we’re drastically outnumbered that this feels a little like a stick-up,” you add, your tone almost sweet, as though daring him to call it a stick-up if it truly is one.

 

“Nothing of the sort, your Ladyship,” – the fuck? – you search his tone for sarcasm, but find none.

 

 _‘Well, I’ve been called a-fucking-lot but Your Ladyship is fucking new,’  -_ you even feel Darling bristle at that one.

 

“The trucks aren’t concerned with you, and it is just us four – ah, but where are my manners? My name is Wilas,” he smiles, and you see how it emphasizes the tiredness of his eyes. It ages him in seconds, and upon closer inspection you can see grey streaks in his short, tawny-brown hair. “-and I am here on behalf of The Kingdom – our sentries spotted you to the east of one of their patrol routes. Nothing nefarious,”

 

Hmph. You still didn’t trust the weirdo as far as you could throw him, but you heard Darling whisper into your ear from behind, jostling you to make a decision.

 

_“We don’t have a lot of choices here princess,”_

 

God, you hated it when he fucking called you that.

 

“Fine, but I’m keeping my weapons and my shit,”

 

And just like that, events were set in motion, and God you had not a single chance of trying to control it. The rule of thumb is this: the less people you’re involved with, the better. So far, your life consisted mostly of Darling, and Idris – then Idris’s allies, but mostly Darling. He’d been your travel partner for years, long before you found Idris. A remnant of a time gone by, from your very first community. He was a remnant of the start of The Collapse. It was less complicated like this, but trotting behind these Kingdom scouts – as you’d come to think of them in your head, since they’d been looking for you, would undoubtedly make things more complicated.

 

You’d also have to keep Darling out of trouble, and hope that these people are decent, and though it pains you to acknowledge it, you’re the more responsible one here, and relying on Darling to lead you through wouldn’t keep you safe. Fact. It’s an unusual coupling, a guy in their forties and a woman just barely twenty-one, so you know how odd it must look to those men. Wilas, and his Kingdom…bodyguards, or hunters, or whatever their position was – no wonder he made an assumption. That assumption being that the older, male adult was responsible for taking care of you and so you just fell into lockstep with him. It’s easy to think that, but you always sit ahead on the horse, and it only takes analysing of Darling’s subservient body language or a few moments of your cold banter to realise that you were something of a de-facto leader. It had to be this way.

 

Darling is old, and he remembers a time before The Collapse and given a hint of safety, will gladly lull himself into the security that the Old World that gave him. He never truly hardened himself because of it, Idris’s Outpost to an extent, also enabled this, negating or at least balancing all of the hardship he’d seen on the road. It made him soft.

 

You were not.

 

You had barely a chance to start in this world, your last memories being of school back in your homeland, before the world began to shift around you. You adapted fully. You would not be lulled and tempered into softness so easily, and that is exactly the quality that made you fit to lead.

 

That, and the fire that you had to leave your original community to begin with. The fire and the bravery that Darling had wished he had to just up and leave of his own will. You remember it like it was yesterday, and on long hunts like this one, when your stomach rumbled with hunger, your mind would spitefully remind you of the times in Atlanta Airport where you had all of your needs met and never worried for food. It was like a nasty little reminder that you had chosen this path. You can even remember the stupid words that had started it all off.

 

 _“If you don’t like the way things are run here, you can fucking leave, any time! Nothing is keeping you here!”_ the fire marshal had snarled. Richard was, for a lack of better word, a complete and total prick.

 

His presence was once calming and desperately needed at the start of the initial outbreak, at the very beginning of the Collapse. When all of the planes on the tarmac were no longer allowed to leave, you had, at first, thought it was a terror attack. The abrupt groping from the TSA and refusal to allow a small bottle of water on the aeroplane made you damn well hope their security was airtight, but as hours turned into days, it became very apparent very quickly that this wasn’t a matter of terrorism. Admittedly, the word ‘biological terrorism’ floated around briefly, but as more and more television screens broadcasting the shutting down of airports all over the globe began to go utterly dark, the more obvious it was that this wasn’t a planned chemical attack. Whatever was happening, whatever was keeping you trapped in Atlanta International Airport, it was far out of the reach of any government or any isolated group. It felt like a plague initially, back when you still had death toll numbers coming in. The plague that wiped out two thirds of Europe, or the Spanish Influenza maybe, and no amount of raiding the Duty-Free for flowery antibacterial soaps could fix it. Whatever it was, it was probably entirely airborne, and whatever was happening, it was happening to everyone without exception.

 

 _“Fine, maybe I will. There has to be people doing better than this, for fuck’s sake,”_ you could remember uttering those words, yet for the life of you, you couldn’t remember what the initial fight was about. Knowing Richard and you, it was probably over something stupid.

 

Darling had swallowed his nerves and bravely followed you that day, and he’d been with you ever since.

 

“You didn’t tell me your name,” Wilas says, looking at you from the corner of his eye mindfully as your emaciated horse trotted quietly beside his own, the others steering well clear of the atmosphere that you singularly radiated. It seemed like Wilas might be the only one immune to it – or pretending to be, anyway.

 

“I didn’t,” you agreed shortly “-I don’t do names,” it sounded rude even to your own ears, so you quickly added “-nothing personal, I just don’t. I never stay in one place too long so there’s never been much-a point,”

 

“Ah,” replied Wilas, frowning. King Ezekiel will want your name regardless, but he’d cross that bridge when it came, the man was charismatic as all Hell too, so if anyone could get it out of you, it’d probably be him.

 

“Well…she might not do names but I do. I’m Darling,” your compatriot offers, he doesn’t abide by the same ethics and rules you do. He’s always been more personable. “Harry Darling,”. You almost want to elbow him for breaking your rule and opening his mouth, but as gentle drops of rain begin to fall and herald the storm, you let out a long, withering sigh. You can already tell Darling is erring on the side of trust. Like always.

 

Idiot.

 

It’s a wonder he’s alive at all with a mentality like that.

 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you good sir,” Wilas grins, and Darling it seems has finally noticed how odd his dialogue is, but does his best to try to nervously return the smile.

 

“Just a bit further now, I promise. Soon, you can put your feet up and forget all about the long trip.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

_Capitol Hill, WASHINGTON, D.C_

**THE KINGDOM**

The Kingdom itself was fortified by a great set of metal, thick-sheeted doors, heralded by the tall looming American flag that withered on a windless pole. Looking at it, it reminded you vaguely of some of the communities you’d seen in passing in your journey over the state lines. Darling let out a long appreciative whistle as it came into view, turning to Wilas.

 

“This is…impressive,” he admitted “-we’ve been on the road for a while and haven’t seen anything quite like this,” and that’s true. You’d flitted through and past a fair few of Virginia’s surviving communities. The capital city of Richmond had been scrapped, now titled “New Richmond,” with only half of the city annexed for the living, it was composed entirely of a brute-force group called The New Frontier and proved a decent place to hole up until they started conducting raids to smaller surrounding settlements. It still wasn’t quite the size of The Kingdom, at least, from the outside.

 

“He’s right,” you offer, feeling like you’d been uncomfortably quiet for a while now. You decide to test the waters as the massive gate groans open.

 

“You’re bigger than some of the places we’ve passed through, but not the first to invite us in,” you feel Darling bristle against you in surprise, clearly not expecting you to bring this up to Wilas, a man you’d just met.

 

“About a year and a half ago? I want to say? The last time I was up in these parts, some weed of a lad – he invited us to a place called Alexandria, made it out to be something a little like this,” you turn your head to Wilas and let the horse amble in directly beside him, watching as the man barely withheld the urge to squirm under your gaze.

 

‘ _The sentries were right. This is creepy,’_ Wilas thinks, carefulling not to brush against the slew of organs hanging down like tapestries either side of your legs.

 

“Is it still around? Every so often we pass the bones of an old place that used to have people,” it really is pure curiosity, you had holed up briefly in an airstrip called Prescott when you and Darling very quickly discovered that The New Frontier was a not a place you wanted to get sucked into, and were better off continuing to risk working for Idris. Now, a year and a half later on another job, Prescott is utterly overrun, and immediately you have to retire any thought of the friendly acquaintances you’d made being alive.  

 

“Alexandria still stands,” said Wilas firmly, before going over the fact you had last made contact more than a year ago “-though if you find yourself tempted to ride out there, whether or not the person who offered you refuge is still alive is anyone’s guess. Alexandria is under some new management,”.

 

You’re not really sure how to take that, but Darling is instantly uneasy.

 

“Though I am curious, if you were offered refuge there, why didn’t you take it? You two don’t seem like you’re doing terribly well out there – no offence, Ladyship. It’s just, your horse is practically bones,” he glanced at your face, and something in his eyes softened, even if he found you utterly creepy.

 

“And pardon my forwardness, but you seem rather thin in the face.”

 

“I tell her to take more food breaks,” Darling butted in, making you elbow him sharply. “-but she has this idea in her head that she doesn’t need to eat until she starts feeling sick. If she had it her way, I don’t even think we’d have shut-eye,”

 

You looked at him over your shoulder just to glare daggers at him.

 

“Oh don’t give me that look, you bemoan any time wasted that you think we could be doing something more productive in, you even wanted to ride out the storm that’s coming,”.

 

“Oh, that’s not good,” Wilas tittered “-you need to take care of yourself in a world like this, there’s not many people out there willing to do that for you,” he says it in a blasé sort of tone, but it still does feel like a light scolding from a man twice your age.

 

“Here you’ll find that easier at least, nobody goes hungry in this Kingdom,” Wilas smiled, and opens his arms out in a grandiose sort of gesture to the sights of people milling around, a horse pen, and stacks upon stacks of greenery. It’s enough to floor you for a moment, as it’s plonked in the middle of a concrete city, but it’s real – and beautiful in way only an oxymoron can be, like an oil fire at sea.

 

“We have produce for days,” Wilas smirked at your expression “-you can tie your horse up in our stables and we’ll get you situated. There’s a few people that will need to see you, but you’re no good if you’re fainting on your feet.”

 

A word of protest is on your lips – you really don’t appreciate how insulted you are by the insinuation that you aren’t coping just fine, from some stranger. You’re about to sass him, only to have your own elbowing returned when Darling (who knows you entirely too well) ribs you to hold your complaints in.

 

It's better than any of you can really hope for, enough that you’re bitingly critical and harsh. It’s not that you’re out to make yourself miserable, whatever Darling may think. Assuming the worst is the healthiest survival technique you can have, as little surprises you, and you’re prepared when the worst actually does come to pass.

 

“You’re being overly cynical,” Darling said, when the pair of you had been given lodging. They had small housing complexes that felt too much like the remnant of a family home for you to be comfortable. They had kept their word though – you could keep your weapons. They’re all together too friendly, and their manner of speak is just odd, as well as their overall function.

 

“If it works for them, who’re we to judge?” he sat on the edge of a double bed. It’s your bed, but for the longest of time, the two of you slept closely. It had been this way for so long that if it were supposed to be awkward between two people who weren’t romantically inclined, it simply didn’t show anymore.

 

“You don’t have to poke a delusion much before it shatters,” you said pointedly, sliding out of a pair of sweaty boots.  “Remember Helton?”

 

“Helton was different,” Darling replied, taking on a stubborn tone. “He was a psycho before The Collapse. Doomed the moment his meds ran out. These people are just…looking at history and using what works. I don’t blame them for that,”.

 

You sigh, great – a mass delusion, they even had a king. A bloody king, a name spoke with such reverence that you had to wonder if there was a strange cult of personality behind this ‘King Ezekiel’ or if he really was just such a great guy that nobody had an ill word for the man.

 

“Great, so it’s a mass delusion. If they’re not a culty bunch, we can probably get out of here with all our limbs,” you throw yourself onto the bed, feeling strangely guilty at the sensation of a soft, warm bed at your back when you didn’t trust these people as far as you could throw them.

 

“We aren’t that far north,” Darling’s voice is only half-teasing, he can’t be sure there’s no cult like movements in this end of Virginia, but he pretends as though he can, if only to put you at ease. You knew from Idris’s reconnaissance work that there was at least one such group further north who he had limited trading deals with. Alpha Centauri – a nomadic lot, not unlike yourself, only they preferred to move their entire, small community when they could, so as to avoid marauding bands of survivors.

 

 

“You don’t have to travel far to find crazy,” you tell him, sagely – just missing the snort that left him in response as you shut your eyes. He’d be keeping watch for now, and you’d rotate shifts like normal. You aren’t in the wilderness, but it’s an understanding you’d developed between each other, especially in areas you didn’t trust.

 

“You don’t have to tell me, I travel _with it_ ,” Darling smirked – narrowly avoiding a sleepy swat from your foot into his back, before he too shuffled onto the bed, but remained upright against the headboard.

 

“Love you too asshole,” you yawned out sleepily, yeah, you were more exhausted than you cared to admit. Darling knew better than to call you out for sidling up to his legs too, it wasn’t that you were a conscious snuggler, but it seemed like you gravitated to the warmest thing – and most often it was him. He watched you roll over to his leg and your face press against the side of his thigh, snuffling into his tracksuit pants.

 

Glancing at the ajar door, he noted a figure keeping watch. These people were very trusting, it seemed – but not trusting enough to leave the pair of you entirely to your own devices. 

 

“Looks like we have a guard,” said Darling, softly, knowing that you’re not one to fall asleep so easily no matter how exhausted you are.

 

“Oh, him? Yeah, he never left. Wouldn’t worry. He looks young enough that he’s probably still stuck to his mother’s tit, so I don’t know what he hopes to achieve if we decided we wanted to leave, or open fire,” you mumble back, crudely.

 

Darling isn’t remotely surprised, he didn’t even notice the guard subtly stick around but typically, you noticed everything. It’s why he can afford to even be somewhat lazy about things, knowing that you were as hypervigilant as you were no matter how much he told you to unwind even slightly.

 

“Gee, they must really think we’re hard-up and desperate to stay if they’re sticking a kid who barely has his first chin hairs to our room,” Darling said, just loud enough for the guard to hear.

 

To his credit, he doesn’t react, he just turns his back to the ajar door silently.

 

You let out a small laugh against his leg, and do your best to rest, feeling Darling stroke your hair absentmindedly as he often did.

 

It was soothing, and secretly, you rather liked when he did it. It was good that he didn’t make you ask, because you enjoyed it enough that you just might swallow your pride to do it. Darling just does it anyway, like he knows that you enjoy it but are too embarrassed to say so.

 

One of the things Darling notices now, is how innocent you seem. When both of you have shed the flesh shawls and awkwardly placed them atop a dresser, the smell no longer bothers either one of you, and he can see your entirely small body for what it is. There’s battered dark selvage jeans that are so thick with grime they’ve gone a shade darker than they truly are, going from brown to black. The racerback tank-top you comfortably swam in had gone from white to dirty grey with tinges of blood that had soaked through from the shawl around the collar and stomach of the shirt. Everything right down to the discoloured, dark, sun-bleached bra underneath (which he only knew from having his turn hand-washing clothes) screamed ‘entirely too worn-out’ and his own clothes aren’t much better. The shawls had a habit of dripping and soaking through with every new addition added to the fish wire periodically and it left maroon stains all over his tracksuit jacket. He looks more well-fed than you, he noticed. Not by much, but he is. He remembers to eat, even when you insist you’re fine.

 

He can’t imagine you’ll make much of an impression on King Ezekiel looking like this. When you’re asleep, you don’t seem very imposing.

 

The following morning you’re brought straight out to King Ezekiel, and unfortunately, Darling’s thoughts are correct. You don’t make for a very imposing figure without your flesh shawl, but it’s only on advice from the guard that you leave it behind. Apparently, he had a rather exotic pet, and the last thing you wanted to do was advertise as dinner. You couldn’t say dead flesh would be particularly appealing but the sight of pink meat could be enough, so wisely, you leave it behind.

 

You and Darling are led to a stage, an actual theatre set, complete with rows upon rows of unfilled seats where it feels like somebody forgot to close the curtain on a play a long time ago. There’s a lacquered wooden, elevated stage surface with cut cardboard backgrounds of shrubbery and stonework hanging up, creating a half-complete scene.

 

There’s a throne at the centre and a man beside it, you suppose you’re supposed to address him directly, but instead, your fingers fly to the hilt of the revolver packed to your heavy belt. It’s a dangerous thing to do, but your eyes don’t leave the slumbering animal tucked at the corner of the stage. It’s certainly no prop, the hulking breathing pattern and shiny, lively coat of the creature tells you that it’s real, alive, and certainly no rug.

 

“Th-that’s a fucking tiger!” Darling let out a noise that sounded like a mixture of a shriek and a squeak. The tiger, it seemed, was utterly nonplussed by the amount of humans around it.

 

“That’s just Shiva,” the figure upon the throne said “-Stow your weapons, she’s far more concerned with her beauty sleep than you,”.

 

There’s an underlying threatening tone to his words, but only when you see the heavy chain around the tiger’s neck, presumably for handlers to guide her, do you move your fingers away from your gun.

 

Never mind the lack of sense it made to have a dangerous animal as a pet, you shuddered to think of the thing’s diet. Big cats required meat and lots of it, so you really didn’t want to know what went in its belly. You turn to the throne – at the left is a somewhat portly but friendly-faced gentleman, long hair tied into a tight bun, body-armoured and sporting a long makeshift spear. On the throne itself however, is a man who manages to seem larger than life whilst doing very little in turn. He sports long, thick dreadlocks that travel down his shoulders and back, and has a naturally domineering air about him as he splays himself knees apart, lazily resting his chin in one hand as he looks at you and Darling.

 

His first sight is the blood that’s soaked through into your tank, and then the state of your clothing overall. Darling has two guns at the hip of his tracksuit but looks in infinitely better condition, you on the other hand, have two long sheathes crossed over your back for a set of bolo machetes, and a small revolver at your thigh. The gun-belt is on its tightest hook and barely holds up to your waist. He can’t put you anywhere past your twenties, but somehow, you’re much more worn out than your older partner.

 

“You’re the one my sentries spotted?” his voice is deep, and rumbling.

 

You nod sharply, once. Something about this setup isn’t right.

 

“Then let me be the first to say, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you, your Ladyship,” and there it is again, that queer manner of speak. It sets you on edge and it shows. Everything right down to the way you hold yourself reminds him vaguely of an equally torn-up woman, though much older, who stood in a similar spot, gazing right the way through him with little effort.

 

Just like you were.

 

“Could you, could you maybe not call me that? It’s more than a little odd,” you temper your words, mostly due to the tiger in your peripheral vision, but the man standing beside the throne snaps.

 

“If King Ezekiel deigns you with respect than you had best return it, Outlander.”

 

Outlander, are they fucking kidding? You guffaw before you can stop it. It’s too ridiculous. It feels like a fucking fever dream, you half expect Darling to be pinching you awake, but it seems he’s busy pinching himself, the same look of abject disbelief frozen on his face.

 

“At ease, Jerry,” Ezekiel says – you refuse to entertain this notion of ‘kingship’ – even in your head it sounds ridiculous. You don’t care much for how forgone humanity is, and you aren’t about to resort to feudal era rules.

 

“These two have clearly braved and toiled in the outside long enough to forget themselves, it’s easily forgiven,” there’s a gentle chastisement to his tone as his eyes flicker over to the man “-it is easy to do, and harder to appreciate when we have such strong walls to stay behind. Not everybody does.”

 

The man – Jerry – falters, before seeming reluctantly apologetic.

 

“If I’m not to call you your Ladyship, then may I have your names? I’d hate to be rude to invited guests,”.

 

He said names, plural. So, Harry Darling introduces himself first, flashing a nervous smile and glancing between the tiger and Ezekiel. Reluctantly, you give him your own name, and the first thing he notices is just how different the pair of you sound from one another.

 

Darling is inescapably American, but you have a strange traveller’s brogue about you, where certain inflections on letters and insistent elocution of sounds usually skipped makes him think almost of English, but overall almost too hard to pin down to any one place. Darling has a charm about him, but you on the other hand, are hard, and brittle. Where Darling has charm, you reflect little patience, and do not cow at his feet.

 

Considering how heavily armed his court are, and the numbers – it’s rather foolish, and yet, Ezekiel cannot help but respect it.

 

“We needed somewhere to weather the storm,” you said “-now that we have, we’ll be on our way. I’m uh, thankful for the hospitality,” the words are awkward, but it’s been a while since you’ve been treated this kindly, for free. Frankly, you didn’t trust their intentions, or their invite to begin with. The Alexandrians had made more sense to you last year, because the recruiter had been blunt and honest with what they were looking for. The Kingdom merely suggested themselves as a point of refuge, and you, knowing how unwelcoming your visage had come to the sentries, refused to believe they’d so willingly open their doors to what looked like a nightmare on four legs.

 

“You were no trouble,” Ezekiel smiles “-the storm was rough, it overturned some of our vehicles in the night, so you were smart to take the offer. Though it is at this point I must be honest with you,”

 

 _‘Annnnd here it comes,’_ you thought, scornfully.

 

“While I open my Kingdom as a point of refuge, now I’ve had the pleasure of meeting you, it would behoof me to invite you to stay. As long as you desire – you seem….adept at dealing with what’s out there, and our numbers have fallen somewhat thin over the last few days,”.

 

And that’s when you feel a cold lurch come over you, and you’re making mental connections far faster than Darling can keep up with. You remember something about Alexandria being under ‘new management’ and you remember a certain unease reported south of the travel line Idris had marked on your maps. At first, you just thought it was between Prescott and The New Frontier, whom you’d already made enemies with, especially having passed through the bones of the airstrip of what was once a nice community. The New Frontier was also known for raiding smaller settlements up north since it was an easier road route to New Richmond, their base, that way. It enabled them to stay out of the reach of some of the bigger groups down south, but occasionally splashed in southern waters.

 

Apparently, you were wrong, and the problem was _entirely_ southside, where you were currently. You doubted very much The New Frontier had the supplies to get from New Richmond to The Kingdom, it was practically unfeasible unless they drastically increased their uptick for supplies and fighting numbers. No. Something specific to this area had to be happening and you didn’t have enough information. Maybe The Kingdom had attacked or been attacked by the Alexandrians, for all you know they were responsible for this “new management” or vice versa, or something even bigger transcending the groups was going on, you weren’t familiar enough this far south to know much about those settlements in detail once you were over the New Richmond line.

 

Ezekiel feels the intensity of your stare but doesn’t bristle, a lesser man might have. Jerry is distinctly uncomfortable with the awkward silence that had followed his offer. It’s only broken by the sudden drop in your tone, and a festering mistrust boiling over to the surface as you looked at the deceptively kind king.

 

“What aren’t you telling me?” your eyes narrow. He wouldn’t be offering you this without a reason, two people riding a horse entirely draped in organs along with themselves simply didn’t begat a household invite in conventional terms. No. Something’s not right here, and the senses which had saved you innumerable times were screaming at you not to take this at face value. “What have you _heard?”_ you all but hiss.

 

The New Frontier might not have made their way down here in terms of forceful expansion but that didn’t mean rumours couldn’t, and if that was the case, then there’s a chance the sentries were looking out for you on purpose.

 

Ezekiel smiled at your choice of words, albeit reluctantly. It seemed his persona wouldn’t fly with you anymore than it had Carol Peletier, whom you were starkly reminding him of, though far less even-tempered.

 

“We heard of a skilled pair, though worded more like a nightmare, passing through from up north. At first, we feared you might be of questionable stock, but one cannot expect to present as you do and not be whispered about,” said Ezekiel bluntly. “Alexandrians spoke of you first, about a year and some ago, though you weren’t found again. Then another – a courier sent from the Hilltop. You present a terrifying visage, you know.”

 

“That is the aim,” you said darkly “-otherwise it’s easier to get fucked with when we’re this far from our outpost,” it’s hard to figure out what to call Idris’s Outpost. You’re less of a community, and more like a ragtag team of highwaymen if you’re truthful.

 

“There wouldn’t be any back-up from them when we’re getting through a hoard, or anyone else for that matter, when our…” you struggle with how to frame Idris. Boss doesn’t sound right, not when you argue with him as fervently as you do. You’re not supremely close either. He values you and you value him, but even on a good day, you’re not wholly sure if he likes you and Darling very much. “-employer,” yeah, employer sounded right “-sends us this far south.”

 

“And who is your employer?” he doesn’t mock your use of the word, clearly you were struggling to define the relationship.

 

Honestly, you don’t know if it’s a good idea to share this much, highwaymen don’t make for good allies but Idris was a trader as much as he was someone who ran a group of greedy scavengers, he couldn’t possibly have enemies this far south, right?

 

 _“Tell him you work for the dirty Kosovo,”_ Darling hissed quietly in your ear in low tones, you speak, as though he hadn’t said anything, his reasoning being that the tiger might fucking eat the pair of you if you aren’t forthcoming.

 

“Idris,” you say shortly, at the lack of recognition, you decide to test the waters, and mumble out the preferred by-your-leave he and his scavengers shared. It was recognisable, even if most people didn’t understand the mother tongue of the phrase. “Vrasni mirë, dhe shpesh?”.

 

At the utterly blank expression, you feel Darling let out a sigh of relief beside you.

 

“Doesn’t ring a bell with me,” Ezekiel murmured “-you’re too far out then. You need to stay here to tool up if you’re considering leaving, which I hope, would give us enough time to convince you to stay,”

 

It seems now, that he’s ready to be honest with you.

 

“There’s a reason you were seen fit to recruit by the Alexandrians last year, even if management has changed hands, and the person who extended it may not be there anymore. Clearly, they saw something in you, and to have tamed your horse in such a way as to walk with the dead – well. We have horses, and we know this is no easy feat, flesh-coats or not,”.

 

You do not budge on your position of not trusting Ezekiel as far as you can throw him, he already unveiled an ulterior motive, who knew what was going through his head?

 

“You said your numbers thinned. How?” there’s almost no inflection as you ask, it’s a cool, hard, demand. Jerry practically bristles at the disrespect, but Ezekiel holds up a single hand to silence his rebuke in his throat.

 

“Dispute,” he said shortly “-it has since been resolved and a new peaceful arrangement with the offending settlement has been reached. Unfortunately, that’s left us low on fighting hands, and a kingdom means little without people behind it.”

 

“You don’t know us,” it’s Darling who butts in now “-and you have the recommendation of a man who may be as good as dead. Like you said, we don’t come off all warm and fuzzy. Can you even trust us behind these walls? Forgive us, but in a short time you’ve invited us in, let us sleep, fed our horse and asked us to stay. It is not something typically done. Even the last community we passed through at least kept us prisoner for a while.”

 

You almost wanted to kick him for revealing so much, but settled for glaring daggers at the idiot instead.

 

That’s when Ezekiel smiled once more, and turned his attentions solely to Darling.

 

“Well, that’s the second part to this story, someone else vouched for you,” he slowly raised himself off of his throne, and his tones took on a strange warmth.

 

“One of our sentries of the same name recognised you. Tell me, do you know the name Emma Darling?”

 

And just like that, you felt a crack running through your world, everything was going to come down from just two words. Two fucking words that you thought you might never hear again.

 

Emma Darling.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The following afternoon was dreary, the pavement and stone had been washed a darker shade of moisty grey from the sheer amount of rainfall, and branches from the overgrown shrubbery which had been allowed to grow in The Kingdom had snapped and been strewn about from the harsh winds of the storm that had happened last night. You walked through them, and found yourself sulking, watching as a man emerged from his house to begin sweeping the fallen debris from the footpaths. It would be a prime time to have a sulk, it didn’t matter how long you’d been with your partner, the moment you’d seen his face light up like all of his Christmases had come at once had told you that you did not belong there. You don’t even fucking remember Emma Darling, she probably was never part of the airport community or if she was, she’d left when you were young enough not to remember.

 

“Keep your wife warm for me, won’t you? I’ll make introductions later,” you grinned a shiteating grin at Harry and earned yourself a playful sucker-punch for your troubles.

 

“Cheeky brat!” Harry scoffed, sending you on your way.

 

In truth, you just didn’t want to encroach on what felt like a family reunion. Sure, Harry Darling was family, but he was family in the sense that once you’d been around someone exclusively long enough, they were just part of you, this was his _actual_ family, family by choice, a bond from the Old World. It automatically, intrinsically just felt like it meant more.

 

So you left him to it, you could allow for that much at least.

 

Of all the places Harry Darling could have found his wife, The Kingdom was probably one of the nicer ones. The only ‘nice’ settlement you could have spoken of in these parts was Prescott, and they had long been taken apart, probably by the Frontier, if you had to guess. There’s a lot of fucked up shit out there, there’s people who rule by cult of personality not unlike Ezekiel, but function in much more damaging ways than simply taking on a feudal era role. There’s Alpha Centauri – that nomadic group Idris had dealt with for example.

 

Now, Idris had been a harsh, unforgiving man long before The Great Collapse, but even he was unnerved by how that group had operated. Something about its women, few though they were, he’d called them dead-eyed and doll-like and refused to have much more to do with the man who ran the place for reasons he never made clear to you. Payton-something. Then there was that rather horrid ordeal with The New Frontier the last time you’d been sent to New Richmond. Someone had targeted Idris’s supplies on their way from Prescott to a supply point drop, before the place had become overrun. It was an ambitious trade route, to go _that_ far, but mostly there were just a few dead clogging the chosen pathway, not much in the way of people. Doable with enough ambition. Nobody had expected people to target the airstrip too which had made this seem so safe, because Prescott had seemed so small and uninvolved. Either way, it had brought you up north, head-hunting, specifically.

 

The New Frontier denied involvement, of course, and did much the same as Ezekiel, offering you refuge. You’d almost took it too, until you ask one too many questions of the wrong people had nearly resulted in your untimely death. You and Darling quickly left before a civil war brewed there, which was probably why Prescott was destroyed. Whoever won probably targeted the airstrip, since that whole mess had been about who had been conducting illegal raids, like the one on Idris’s supplies. It’s probably why you don’t trust Ezekiel, it’s too kind, too convenient, and most of all, it just simply isn’t done.

 

Emma being here was an unaccounted-for variable, which explained a lot. She’d probably been spending days convincing Ezekiel and whoever else to extend invite of refuge to you and not to capture you or shoot on sight once she knew Harry was in your company. It seemed convenient to you, but in reality, it was probably just happenstance. Harry seemed just as surprised as you, too – and more than once, you knew for a fact he _looked_ at you. Not in an overtly creepy way but… well, just in that way a man and a woman might look at each other if they’re alone in each other’s company intimately for long enough.

 

‘ _Did I love Harry Darling?’_ your stomach gives a sickening little lurch as you make your way to The Kingdom’s smithy, and get your bolos sharpened at a grindstone by a man with a dirt-covered apron.

 

“You’re the Organ Grinder, right?” you barely bristle at the title, it’s definitely a bit exaggerated-seeming to you, but it seems to fit this ridiculous charade that you’re unwittingly caught in. It’s fake enough that it’s bizarrely suffocating. You’d rather the man welcome you with ‘ _You’re the nutty cunt strewn in guts been riding around these parts?’_ instead of this quasi-blacksmith role he’s trying to play.

 

“If that’s what they’re calling me,” you trail off, glancing at a well-worn nametag that seems like it barely serves its purpose anymore with how close to illegible it is. “Gareth?”.

 

_‘Well if I did love him, it doesn’t fucking matter now, does it?’_

 

Your upset shows on your face, even though you’re a stranger to the man, he offers up a bench near his forge and begins sharpening your machetes with little prompting, letting sparks fly as a high-pitched screech emitted on contact with the grindstone.

 

“Yeah, the one and only,” he grinned, looking up at you with forge soot half-staining his cheek. He had to be late thirties, and his hair was a sun-bleached ginger, but maybe without all of the grime, he might be halfway attractive.

 

“You sure you don’t want something sturdier? Our armoury has some swords to spare. I’m sure we could spare you a claymore if you’re staying,” said Gareth. He’s doing his best to be friendly, but his eyes keep flickering to the bloodstains on the weather-beaten tank-top.

 

“Don’t fix what’s not broken,” you’d have to get accustomed to the weight, and accepting the generosity felt like it’d be accepting the odd “king’s” offer – and frankly you weren’t sure you could bare being in a play without an ending for this long. Harry Darling might be spoken for, you cannot imagine for one moment that he’d want to endanger Emma by taking her on the long trip back to Idris, and Idris was not one to practice charity either.

 

Emma would have to be like…well, like you, if she wanted to be accepted by your employer. It was a complicated net and you would undoubtedly have to speak to Harry, or fuck, maybe even speak to _both of them –_ which might just be awkward as hell. Fuck. Fuck it all to hell and back.

 

There’s a second option though, and it’s something you do often so you’re not floundering around under Harry’s decisiveness, and that’s deciding for him.

 

You already decided you were leaving, you had a head to present, after all, and it was just rotting in a knapsack right now and Idris fully expected to see it. You weren’t about to lose sight of your goal, it didn’t matter how easy life appeared to be here, you had it good with Idris, and you had an understanding with him. Here? What did you have? Some entirely strange man wrapped up in a feudal era delusion while your travelling partner and long-time companion and only piece of your past back at Atlanta Airport went back into the arms of his wife?

 

God, fuck that shit. Fuck that shit so fucking hard.

 

“I’m not sticking around anyway Gareth, I’m tooling up, getting some food and some sleep – seeing what I can do to earn my stay, then leaving. I don’t take things for free. I don’t like owing anybody,” you said shortly.

 

“That’s sensible, I suppose. But why ever would you want to go back out there?” he asks, more curious about you than anything. He might have been terrified if you’d approached him in your organ-shawl and all, but on your own, he found your company much more agreeable. Far less terrifying than your description had made you out.

 

“There’s nothing for me here, and I have someone waiting on me,” you said quickly, taking back your machetes.

 

“There could be something for you here,” offered the man “-if you wanted,” he shrugs. He’s overly nice to you, and you call him out on it rather bluntly.

 

“You only seem a few years older than my daughter,” Gareth relented “When William described you originally, I expected somebody much older,” and scarier, though that went unsaid.

 

“Sorry to disappoint,” you end the conversation coldly and resist the urge to cringe at your own callousness. It really had been far too long since you’d talked to a _normal_ person, a normal person who wasn’t like Idris and his men, or Harry Darling, and it fucking _showed._

You’re like that with the few who manage to brave approaching you, cold and standoffish with a very particular sense of humour that doesn’t seem like it fits in. It’s like being a piece of a puzzle in the wrong picture entirely. You stick out like a sore thumb whether you want to or not, so you’re quick to don the new clothes offered, eat your first full meal in a while – fresh vegetables! Of all the things! And quickly look for ways to earn your keep rather than approach the Darlings or anyone else for that matter.

 

Yes, you’re avoiding them, but you’re a heartbroken twenty-something with nobody to really voice it to, even if you wanted to, and lacked much in the way of coping mechanisms to deal with it. The one time you could have been taught with such, the apocalypse was too busy happening, so that didn’t occur.

 

Avoidance works just fine though, Harry has what? Seven years to catch up on with her? That’s a long time, five of those years he’d been travelling with you. You’d left Atlanta Airport at the tender age of seventeen, and never looked back.

 

‘ _Did I love Harry Darling?’_

You remembered how his eyes lit up like a Christmas tree at the mere mention of Emma, and then in person when he saw her in all her fair-haired beauty, like the world hadn’t ended.

 

 _‘Maybe just a little,’_ but the thought even felt resentful in your head, as you felt the figurative knife twist in your gut as you mounted Styx.

 

It was time to find something to do that wasn’t “dealing with your own problems.”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

_WASHINGTON, D.C_

**THE KINGDOM** || **SOUTH-EAST SUPPLY DROP** **POINT**

 

 

You’re distant to Harry and it isn’t hard to tell why, you avoid him quickly in the morning, and he sleeps somewhere else as opposed to the building you’d been welcomed in. He must be burning with a need to talk to you, one doesn’t throw away five years with someone to pick up exactly where they left off, but you don’t want to give him the privilege. You don’t want to give him a choice. You want to fold in and resort to that age-old habit of deciding for Harry so that he doesn’t have to feel the burden of responsibility. It doesn’t matter if he’s a full twenty years older than you, he isn’t _like_ you, and he is far more easily strained working under Idris than you are.

 

This place might just be his chance to be happy, and God, Emma was here. Even if it was a place full of weirdos, he’d be happier here rather than looking over his shoulder every night in the wilderness, or cringing and looking away as you acted out Idris’s orders without regret.

 

 _‘That reminds me, I really have to leave tonight, whether Harry comes or not. That head Idris wants is just rotting every day I leave it in my bag,’ –_ you cringe at the thought, as it’s also strapped to your saddle, but ignore it. Nobody has asked you to open your bag, so nobody needs to know what’s inside.

 

You don the shawl and mount Styx, following the Kingdom’s horses and trucks of supplies to a drop-point of what seems like a dilapidated high street. There’s a long line of shopping carts which have been tucked into each other to make a sort of informal boundary.

 

“You don’t have to do this, but I’m glad you’ve come,” it’s Wilas speaking to you, and now more than ever, strange though you are, he is thankful for how terrifying it is to look upon you when you’re dressed like this.

 

“I need to keep busy. Didn’t want to play gooseberry,” you said shortly, at that, Wilas gives you a surprisingly understanding smile.

 

“Understandable. I’m sure King Ezekiel is also grateful for your presence, it’s imperative these trades happen peacefully, and without fanfare, but the extra muscle is always comforting. Viscerally, anyway.”

 

You don’t consider yourself ‘muscle’ so much as a lone sort of specialist, but you don’t quibble with the man, and instead let him direct you to the carts and tell you to make sure trouble stays out. It’s easier if you can do it without attracting more attention, as gunfire so often does.

 

“The trucks are loud enough,” Wilas grimaces, and you shrug in response. It’ll probably be a few stragglers, if any. It was your understanding from a very brief fill-in, that these people The Kingdom traded and disputed with protected them from shamblers, and they were the same truckers you’d encountered in the brush when you’d been riding through east of here. So clearly they were doing their job in clearing out hoards, but that protection from the undead did not come freely.

 

Half.

 

Half of everything The Kingdom produced, that was the price.

 

Shit, you can see why they’d dispute it, you mused. Idris wouldn’t stand for that shit, he’s not an unreasonable man, half is a good trade, but even he would settle for thirds when it was dependant on how much a land can produce, and he traded equally in turn. He never just _took_ shit, then again, the protection racket wasn’t his thing so much as it was “give me shit in trade for shit and don’t step on our toes,”.

 

A simple enough business model, it functioned well enough before The Collapse, when his family ran a small sort of gang operation and it operated even better afterwards.

 

You shake your head to clear it, you came out here to not think so much. You came armed with some barbed wire from the supply sheds with the intent of helping seal off some of the areas, but upon seeing the shopping carts, found it unneeded. Honestly, it hurt so much you just wanted to be fucking sick, you’d travelled the road with Harry for five fucking years but it seemed like there was just too much left unsaid and too much between him and Emma for you to just selfishly expect him to resume business as usual.

 

God, being an understanding adult fucking sucked. It hurt and it sucked.

 

For a moment, you’re distracted. Some new, armoured trucks steamroll in from the other side of the road, caring little for the news they were making. They’re an imposing sort and it almost startles Styx, so you must gently soothe him as best you can and put some distance between yourselves.

 

The actual trade-off isn’t your concern, keeping trouble out is. You linger just long enough to watch a long-haired younger man, a fellow with a short beard and aged eyes, and a deeply tattooed black man to jump out from the truck. Just from the formation you could make a guess at the leader. Beard was the leader. Long-hair was the young upstart. Tattoo was the muscle.

 

They all have guns, big ones – but that’s a fairly usual sight now.

 

“Saviors,” you mumble under your breathe, turning your horse around. They haven’t paid you any mind because they haven’t noticed you. Now isn’t the time to dwell on this strange feeling of maybe-heartbreak. You had a job to do, as Idris would say.

It’s only when you spot a few shambles crawling out of a decrepit pharmacy at the noise that you turn Styx to their direction and raise a hand up so Wilas can see it – you’re at the side of the truck and not paid the slightest bit of mind from the angle, by the Saviors, but Wilas nods once to say you can take care of it.

 

The groups are making the exchange, but Wilas’s eyes are entirely on you, as are Ezekiel’s once he notes Gavin is taking front and centre. He was always the more reasonable of the Saviors and could be dealt with in a calm way. It was Jared – the long-haired one who often made negotiations difficult.

 

“I want his stick,” Jared said abruptly, gesturing a tall black man who stood to Ezekiel’s side, you didn’t know his name, but you would learn that it was “Morgan” apparently.

 

You glanced over your shoulder and saw a long, non-pointed stick in his hands. It didn’t look particularly impressive, not at all like the spear wielded by Jerry. It cannot possibly be important, but then again, you knew you had a tendency to bond with your own weapons, as shown when Gareth offered you a claymore, and you refused it.

 

Taking Morgan’s stick didn’t have anything to do with the trade-off, did it? This Jared guy was probably being a dick, and it wasn’t your business. Crudely, you turn away and ride up to the pharmacy, stretching out the barbed wire you had brought in your hands, which were protected by fingerless leather gloves.

 

‘ _No point in letting it go to waste’ –_ you’re quick to curl it around the four shamblers – they’d be enough to pin Styx down if so inclined, they were still upright even if putrification was getting rather intense under the Virginia heat.

 

You needed to wrap this up quickly, and with devastating precision and practice, you were able to, running Styx in a circle until they were wrapped around each other and moaning from their withered throats.

 

You needed some fresh guts anyway, some of the ones on your shawl and the horse-cover were starting to wear against the fish wire, getting in danger of rotting clear off the hook and no longer able to hold themselves in place. It was icky business, but after the sixth or seventh time, you’d actually gotten used to it, even the smell.

 

If you’d told your fourteen-year-old self this in Atlanta Airport, you’d never have fucking believed it.

 

 _‘They’re not even human anymore,’_ you thought passingly, at best, they were what? Spare blood. Blood which was good for dousing yourself with, but guts, now, they stuck even if it rained, which was a key part to your terrifying image.

 

“What the fuck is that?” one of the Savior’s asked rudely as you dragged the walkers until they came apart near the side of the truck.

 

An unfiltered look of pure disgust crossed all their features, but none so fervently than Gavin.

 

“And what the hell is this?” he all but shrieked “-what is this **_freak show_**?” – his head whipped round to Ezekiel first, but honestly, no amount of soft padded words could really dull down the kind of visceral horror that you evoked.

 

It seemed to distract from the stick-debate anyway.

 

“Don’t mind me, just passing through,” you said after one moment, glancing at the pile of moaning walkers barely held together on the floor, you were certain one of them lost a hand as you galloped the pile over. “Keeping out trouble, quietly to pay my dues and then heading out, don’t mean to bother…. whatever this this,” you say bluntly.

 

“This is disgusting,” Jared sneers, but for all his arrogance, even he looks visibly green – the only one somewhat in control of themselves is the tattooed man, Gary.

 

Ezekiel speaks, now you’ve made some headway in terms of an explanation, but Gavin is holding his nose at the smell and close to gagging in disgust, he doesn’t know how you _aren’t._

“She’s an honoured guest of The Kingdom, a traveller, from up north-west,” he said quickly “-do not concern yourselves, she isn’t here to interrupt any part of this deal,”.

 

“Don’t tell us what we can and can’t concern ourselves with,” Gavin manages as calmly as possible, though not taking his eyes off you for even a moment.

 

“What the hell are you doing anyway? You’re covered in… God you’re just covered in it!” he’s more audibly holding back a gag now, and part of you cannot help but feel a little smug, and even Morgan is looking at you with some measure of illness, but carefully schooling his features to remain calm.

 

“It enables me to pass through hoards. Like Ezekiel said,” – you forgoed the use of ‘King’ and Gavin could at least, narrowly appreciate being spared the bullshit “-I am a traveller. As in, a solo one. It’s easier to blend than to fight,” you avoid mention of a partner, no point in it, really.

 

You cannot resist a tinge of sarcasm though, because if Idris were here, he’d be doing exactly that.

 

“If I’d have known this trade-off had a dress-code I’d have stuck on my petticoat,” sneering slightly, your cattiness seems to snap Gavin out of his sickened daze for a moment.

 

“That’s…disgusting…. disgustingly effective, but disgusting,” the cogs are clearly turning behind his eyes as he turns back to Ezekiel and his men.

What he says next, surprises everybody.

 

“Morgan keeps his stick—“Jared opens his mouth to protest, only for Gavin to hold his raised hand dangerously close, gesturing at him to shut up, but also close enough to give into the overwhelming temptation to slap some sense into the younger, fight-hungry boy.

 

“-but your little…freak show you brought here to intimidate follows us when we leave, don’t think I don’t see what you’re trying to do here,” said Gavin bluntly, and you blink almost owlishly. Yeah, you’re fully aware you’re not exactly the most welcoming image, but did you class as an intimidation tactic?

 

Considering you reached about 5”4 in height and considered yourself petite, you really didn’t think you were intimidating enough for all these men with guns, one on one? Certainly. You were nightmare fuel, but surely with all their trucks and their guns and their war-toys, they couldn’t be that intimidated still, could they?

 

“I doubt Negan will be very happy to hear of it, regardless. Come on Ezekiel, I thought I knew you better than this, chest-beating bullshit isn’t going to work out for anyone now, is it?” his tone is gentle and chastising as he looks at Ezekiel, but you can practically _hear_ Jerry’s teeth grinding against each other in irritation.

 

“She merely offered her services to help make this trade-off as clean as possible and keep trouble at bay, nothing more,” said Ezekiel as soothingly as he could.

 

“It’s true, and I’m leaving anyway,” you offer haplessly, honestly, these guys seemed like assholes and you had more than your fair share of those. Your options were to stay and deal with the fact your heart wanted to shit itself over the Darling situation, or leave, and you were keen on the latter.

 

You had a rotting head that needed delivering to Idris after all, and UPS was hardly a fucking option.

 

“You best do what he says,” Jared pipes up, making a head gesture to Gavin. “If he says you follow, you follow.”

 

“Hold – hold the fuck on here, I didn’t agree to be an intimidation tactic, I’m just helping out. I don’t want to be roped into…whatever the fuck this is. I have people waiting west of Virginia – I can’t just…” the protests die in your throat as Jared rather flippantly raises his rifle at you.

 

Covered in guts or not, he doesn’t seem to like not being in control.

 

“You’re a solo traveller, you said?” Gavin doesn’t actually stop Jared this time, but puts his hand on the rifle gently nudging it to the left out of your firing range for the moment being.

 

“Yes,” you said carefully, which helped Gavin find his resolve somewhere beneath all of his disgust.

 

“You can’t be older than what, nineteen and your people have you doing runs on your own?” age doesn’t exactly matter to Gavin, but you must be from far out to not be on any Savior radar, and that’s the more unusual part, that they’d send someone this young, this far.

 

Avoiding any mention of Harry, you just shrug, and glance at your knapsack.

 

“Unfinished business,” you said shortly, not looking any of them in the eye. “-my employer is a man who goes to very desperate means to prove you don’t cross him, no matter how far out you are,”.

 

These people, these Saviors – they seem a bit like bullies.

 

You smirked.

 

You _ate_ bullies.

“And who might that be?” there’s some mockery in Jared’s tone, but he’s curious – it’s wiped off the moment you open your knapsack and very slowly pull out a tuft of hair – hinting at what could only be an entire head.

 

Jared cannot help it, he visibly balks. Such gore isn’t beyond his threshold, but something about keeping it in a knapsack is sickening to him on a visceral level.

 

“Idris,” your eyes flicker away from him back to Gavin, whose looking away with a grimace. “I work with the Kosovo groups up north-west of the New Richmond line,”

 

There’s a small silence, before Jared mumbles something about being on a shitlist, and it’s Gary – the silent tattooed one who speaks. He mutters something quietly to Gavin but the silence is so profound save for the moaning walkers, that you can hear him clearly.

 

_“Wouldn’t the boss like the look of her?”_

Little did you know, the leader of the Saviors was rather hungry to inflate his numbers, but he only accepted people with something to offer. Specialists, or the especially brutal – and you seemed to fall into the latter category, which Gary was getting at.

 

“ _If she made it up this far on her own she must have something strong about her, right?”_

 

Gavin forced himself to look up into your stare, and was met with a vast amount of emptiness in turn.

 

“Right,” he said slowly. He understands Gary, he does, but he’s so viscerally disgusted that the idea of picking you up like a stray and taking you ‘home’ of all things seems wrong on an intrinsic level.

 

“Better follow our lead then, if you don’t, your new friends might not have such a good time next Collection Day,”.

 

You looked at the deceptively kind king, and wondered narrowly, if you even gave a fuck.

 

The thought of Darling invaded you briefly, and the words spilled out of you before you can stop it.

 

“Fuck it, you lead, I follow,” and the words come out so bitterly, all the members of The Kingdom can do is stare.

 

At this rate, Idris is never going to get that decapitated head, and this was turning out to be an unseasonably long week.

 


	2. Death, My Sweat, My Rust

Storms ||

**CHAPTER TWO**

_“Death, My Sweat, My Rust.”_

 

Love did all sorts of funny things to people. It made them stronger in such strange ways that you wouldn’t expect. More than once, you could feel that call to battle far stronger and far louder when Harry Darling had been in danger. You remembered feeling a strength in your limbs that hadn’t been there previously as you had cut through the thick of the undead just to get to the man who had managed to find himself trapped on a supply run. Love could make you incredibly strong, it seemed – it was the same kind of strength that made mother’s raise cars if they thought their children were underneath and the burning conviction that made people cross oceans to find their missing half.

 

Maybe that’s what he’s feeling for Emma, knowing she’s alive. You’re not sure if you can even stomach the answer. You’re not sure if you’ve ever loved anyone or anything properly before but if someone had to ask you, Harry was certainly the closest you had ever come.

 

The thought twists a knife in your cut as you ride solemnly, with little complaint, behind these strangers. Gavin, Jared and Gary are very surprised by your compliance, though it doesn’t seem to come across as any kind of loyalty to The Kingdom or it’s king.

 

“Fuck it, you lead, I follow,” denoted a kind of blasé tone that told them that you either knew little or thought little of them and assumed yourself above any kind of danger, or perhaps that you didn’t care at all and that your sanity was well up for debate, because these decisions are not based on whims.

 

Yet you conducted yourself with little to no loyalty to the Kingdom beyond doing what’s asked, and turncoat at the first sliver of a chance. It must be a whim.

 

Gary spent some time looking at you through the window of the truck, his eyes catching a soulless stare from you, a lesser man might have squirmed, but behind the layer of glass, he found himself feeling like he was staring at an exhibit and were therefore safe. Safe to admire the inextricably strange nature that you presented.

 

He caught something odd in his intense staring – your eyes, they’re glistening. He thought that you might cry, which, with your expressionless face, would look awfully strange, but instead all he sees is a solitary wisp of water fly into the wind from one eye.

 

It’s not unusual for people under the grip of the Saviors to start crying, in fact, with how harsh they are, it’s almost expected. You, however, followed by choice, so your display of emotions is strange. Maybe something in The Kingdom made you leave, it would explain the readiness – Gary mused.

 

Jared of course, has nothing good to say, he thinks you’re a bit of a freak and for once, Gavin agrees with him, but there’s a palpable strength in you – he couldn’t deny Gary’s assessment of your character. Gary was also known for spotting talent, being the quieter and less outwardly abrasive of the Saviors, yet often ending up on collections or with Negan’s right-hand troupe, he was in a fantastic position to do it, and did so often. He’d pulled in a fair few of the more useful members of the Hilltop colony and the stragglers who did not take kindly to how The Kingdom functioned under Ezekiel, but besides that, his job became less recruiting, and more active muscle. It had been a while since he’d slid back into this role, so it’d be a pleasant surprise at least.

 

Gavin struggled to think of the idea of presenting someone like you to Negan being anything but pleasant though. There is just something wholly unsettling and he isn’t sure if it can be completely blamed on your manner of presentation. There’s a kind of unpleasant miasma in the air when the truck stops and Gary found himself leading the charge now, because of how purely disgusted Gavin and Jared are when they’re forced to reacclimate to the thick scent of the dead.

 

Guts are so utterly pungent, somehow, the insides of a roamer manage to smell tangibly worse than their outsides. There obviously comes a point where after doing something for long enough, you adapt, and cease to notice the troublesome aspects anymore. Looking at you though, Gavin isn’t sure a person could ever become used to draping themselves so comfortably with blood, bone and pure _rot._

 

 _‘Oh, that is disgusting,’_ he cringed as you absentmindedly wiped some sleep from your eyes and spread some blood and small grains of fleshy matter across your upper cheek.

 

Riding through, the first thing you noticed was the long array of makeshift skewers that lined the walls of the Sanctuary. There are roamers skewered and mounted up, groaning and wilting under the hot Virginia sun, covered in what looked like a strange case of steel. From a distance, it looked like liquid mercury, but closer, you could see it was a metal structure, keeping the rotting corpses from tearing themselves apart.

 

Eventually, they’d be fluid and bones and that casing would be useless, but it’s a long way away yet, and proved somewhat ingenious.

“It keeps out trouble,” said Gavin at your curious look “-a bit like your…” he had no polite word, or any word really, to sum up your look “-getup,” he settled on that.

 

 _‘Okay, so these people are smart, there’s that much going for them,’ –_ hopefully they’d spare you the feudal-era bullshit. You weren’t sure how much longer you could hold in your bile, any more of this kind of nonsense and you might just snap. Your entire, silent ride to the Sanctuary had done nothing but leave you time to stew. Think, and stew – chewing on this utterly bitter feeling because as much as you’d hate to admit it out loud, Darling was the only thing on your mind.

 

Was it fair to rob him of any choice, to choose you or _her?_

Maybe, but maybe it’d be worse to be that person who _makes_ him choose, nobody wants to be “that girl” – least of all you. It didn’t mean it made it any _easier_ though, and the overwhelming temptation to u-turn and head back for The Kingdom gnawed at you right up until Gavin jarred you out of your thoughts, and asked you to dismount.

 

You remain on your guard, you don’t have the luxury of dwelling on Darling for much longer and you know it. The survivors were much riskier than the dead, and you had to manoeuvre yourself very carefully. The absolutely last thing you wanted to do was offer yourself up like some sort of sacrificial lamb. You don’t know these people, how they function or how dubious Gary’s motives had been when he “recruited” you. It was time to swallow the toxic vat of emotions and see where exactly you’d landed yourself.

 

It’s Gavin who leaves to find someone, which left you standing there watching life in the Sanctuary unfold. The first thing that struck you was how unsettlingly empty it was – the compound was of considerable size, and yet, you couldn’t see anybody.

 

There was a quietness in the air, the buildings you could see even felt like they might be empty. It’s a ghost town. Most places are, but the thing that makes this place particularly unnerving is that you know for a fact it’s inhabited by the living, but it feels like they might be hiding, and like they may suddenly pour from the foundations and the sewers like _roaches._

 

Something about the compound was putting you on edge in a way The Kingdom did not, but you were silent as Gavin returned, and Jared had tried and failed to get any replies on his walkie.

 

“Everyone’s in the warehouse, Simon’s at the Hilltop,” said Gavin shortly, before winkling his nose in distaste, though this time you couldn’t be sure if it was directed at you, or someone else.

 

“Lucky you,” his voice dripped with sarcasm. He had some reservations about bringing you in, the way that you were, but at the same time, he had a bizarre sense of apprehension about asking you to take off that shawl of flesh around your shoulders.

 

“What about Arat?” Gary asked suddenly, folding muscular arms across a beaten grey-white tank top, only for Gavin to shake his head grimly.

 

“With Simon, we should just bring her over, whoever sees her, sees her,” fact was, anyone would extend an invite to someone to join the Sanctuary if they’re a member, but there is a process for their little invite-only method. They prided themselves on having an efficient and _useful_ community, so everybody who was there had to be worth their salt in some way.

 

That meant somebody higher up had to give the figurative nod, and then put the new addition through to their new accommodation, sort their job, their rota – it ran like clockwork, most of the time, it’s just that there’s very few people with that sort of authority.

 

There’s plenty of cutthroat Saviors who man the resources for the entire Sanctuary that could sort out the kinks and issues with management, but they do _not_ have the authority to say who could definitely stay in the first place. It’s a right exclusively reserved for the upper echelons such as Arat, Simon, Mark and Dwight, but most importantly, _Negan –_ who liked to take a cursory glance at new additions even if he’s so busy that he only spares a moment to do so.

 

It’s a point of principal, because he believes everyone should know who _exactly_ is the fucking boss around here, and have a face to face interaction with him even if it’s the only one they have before they’re sent to earn their keep.

 

Gavin, Jared and Gary seem to be exchanging uneasy looks – well, Jared seems to care least of all, but the more mature men felt discomforted by the thought. You’re not sure why, but by the time they’ve decided to keep you as you are, you’re already impatient.

 

“Who’re you taking me to?” you asked Gavin shortly, your voice cool and flat.

 

“Whoever spots you first,” said Gavin shortly, glancing at you as he began to stride ahead “-maybe it’ll be the boss, maybe it won’t be. Either way, just keep your mouth shut until someone addresses you. Friendly advice,” he added quickly, seeing a flash of irritation in your eyes at his tone.

 

Yes, you realised – this _Gavin_ was smart enough to be frightened of you, even if Jared was not. Gary however, was up for debate – he had enough God given sense to see your uses though, as he was the one who insisted on you coming.

 

A large, sun-bleached warehouse comes into view first, where rumbles of dull noise ooze out under the metal shutters. There’s a man in there shouting, and it’s bouncing off of every wall in the building, and it’s suddenly clear to you that most the inhabitants of the Sanctuary are there, hence the ghost town vibe outside. You’re not sure if this did much to increase or decrease your nerves though, and it felt rather like walking one foot first straight into the viper pit.

 

Reviewing what you know from what little interaction you saw with The Kingdom – these are not a warm and friendly people.

 

‘ _I’m not warm and friendly’_ you mused – all you had to do was keep yourself from showing any hint of weakness. You knew exactly how you would respond to a newcomer back in Idris’s Outpost, how little leniency you gave and how utterly harsh the Kosovans were. Surely, they couldn’t be worse.

 

Nothing could _quite_ be worse.

 

Gavin led first, opening the warehouse doors with a loud, bold creak that made several heads turn as sunlight blared into the confined space. Upon entering, the first thing that strikes your sharpened senses is the smell – it isn’t strong, but you can practically taste it on the breeze.

 

 _‘Something’s burning,’_ you resisted the urge to grip your revolver, because common sense told you that gripping a piddling little gun in a room of heavily armed people who are neither your friend nor your foe while making perhaps, the most disgusting entrance one could make, was probably not a smart idea.

 

There has to be at least forty people in this room, and you see a few turning around and immediately backing into walls or otherwise parting for Gavin and Gary’s presence, while Jared loses himself in the crowd, shifting over to some crates to take a seat and begin talking to somebody that he knows. He took any excuse to get away from you, and it seemed that upon entering, he wasn’t the only one.

 

A sea of disgusted faces closest to the door begin to ripple through the crowd as Gavin and Gary’s shadow casts a tall visage into the room, dwarfing you at either side. They lead you in, but after four long strides, you hear the sound of a woman closest at your right side begin to dry-heave before she even has a hope of stopping it.

 

‘ _Oh come on, you’ve lived in this world long enough, you can’t tell me you’ve been living it up behind a wall for so long that the smell of the fresh undead is something that’s alien to you’_ you did your best not to scoff.

 

Rather than be offended, all it told you was that your flesh shawl was highly effective.

 

“Oh – God, that is _nasty!”_ nobody would dare utter a word when the big boss was making a speech or making an example out of somebody, which is apparently what was occurring right now. You couldn’t tell – you couldn’t see through the throng of people.

 

The voice that said it – a rather mousy looking male, immediately shrank under several stares, but they didn’t linger on him for long. The crowd began to part slowly, and all you could hear despite the great many people in the room, was the sound of your beaten boots slamming into the floor with each purposeful stride.

 

It really did feel like you were interrupting something.

 

You watch as a woman scarpers away from you when a little tendril of rotten flesh drops onto the ground behind you from your shawl.

 

“You’re damn right it’s fucking nasty – look at this fucker’s face and soak it all in!” you hear a deep, lilting, silky baritone – the same voice which had been shouting and echoing all over the warehouse. Apparently, not realising that the gentleman who’d piped up was referring to you.

 

Eventually, you get through enough people that you can see what everybody was piled around for yourself. There’s a tall sort of furnace that takes up a third of the far-left wall, illuminating the scene playing out through metallic, caged, door bars. There is no blood, surprisingly, but instantly your eyes are drawn to the scent of the burning flesh on the breeze.

 

There’s a few Saviors clutching a sagging man, whose head is reverberating with so much pain and utter agony that it’s gone limp against his own neck, lolling lazily to the left and exposing a large, grotesque, iron-shaped burn that bled into his hair and seared all of the flesh surrounding a once quite beautiful eye.

 

He’s actually passed out from the pain, you can tell, just from how limp he is. You’ve dealt with enough passed-out people in your time to know.

Your eyes then draw yourself to the perpetrator – a tall, impressive, 6”2 masculine figure with the width of a lineman, poured into a rough black leather jacket. It’s not any kind of superpower or anything when you can tell instantly that this is the leader, the boss, the _alpha._ He exuded the same sort of air that Idris did only with a much louder and tangible gravitas whereas Idris was always a quieter, softer, more subtle kind of danger.

 

The very presence of your stinking form is like a riptide, pushing Saviors out from you, Gavin and Gary with extremely little effort. You stamped all over your nerves and stood as tall as you possibly could, watching the man set down the iron. It’s covered in strips of melted flesh that were sticking to the metal – surely the source of the smell. The man in question has a clean-shaven face, revealing a firm, wide, masculine jaw which is set to a cocky smirk. There’s something you don’t quite like about him right off the get-go, and it’s not just the fact he’d clearly burnt that poor man’s face.

 

 Perhaps, you mused – you should be scared. There was every reason to be. You’re in a strange place on your own, and for the first time, you’re without Darling. That should be enough, but instead, you feel yourself drifting away from your emotional centre. It’s a common sort of haze that wafts over you every so often, but never quite so thickly. A fog settles over your eyes and it’s like you cannot string your thoughts together to anything complicated, or nuanced. The forceful disassociation at least, was enough to stop you dwelling on Darling, but not quite enough to get rid of the slew of feelings tied with it.

 

“And what the hell is this?” he said cheerfully, though you weren’t certain if he was addressing you, Gary or Gavin. The tall, muscular dark-skinned man steps forward first – which gives Gavin some relief, because he despises opening his mouth anywhere near you. It feels like the moment he does, he’s sucking in that disgusting aroma until he’s tasting it through his nose, under his tongue.

 

Gavin backed up the moment Gary strode forward, putting his arm and hand over his nose because as much as he tries to keep his composure – especially around the boss – there’s only so much that he can bare.

 

“She was with us during the monthly trade-off at The Kingdom,” said Gary. Negan just cocks a brow at that, barely taking his eyes off you for a moment as the man talks, and appraises your shawl silently. It’s viscerally disgusting, but his reaction isn’t anywhere quite so over the top as the others.

 

“She looked promising, so I had her tail us, but it’s been a while I know,”

 

 _‘Huh, so this is what promising looks like nowadays,’_ Negan mused. There’s something unsettling about you, and it isn’t just the fleshy adornments. It’s that far-off sort of look in your eyes, you’re all there but – _not really._ The blood smeared under your eye with the lumpy flecks underneath it that reminded him of soil but was surely skin made you seem somewhat animal, like a smear of war paint across your cheek. There’s a heaviness to your hair which even he can tell from a cursory glance is likely thick with dirt, mud and all that came with slumming it out in the brush. For someone who was with The Kingdom, you didn’t look like any of their people. There was the lack of body armour as was something of a custom there with their warriors, and they were nowhere near so grotesque in their methods. You’re not a Whisperer either – they like to dry and stretch the dead over their skin so as to blend in, and take it a step farther than even you. Something wasn’t quite adding up, but he’s absolutely intrigued the longer he silently evaluates you as Gary talks.

 

“She came with us on her own when we asked, followed us on horseback so we didn’t feel the need to strip her weapons,” he said, though Gary didn’t want to admit it was simply because nobody had the gall to ask, even armed with their admittedly much more impressive guns. You were just so viscerally off-putting that it had thrown them off their game, and they just hadn’t. “Clearly she’s capable.”

 

Well, Negan didn’t think he’d dispute that after seeing how you’ve adapted –and there is something positively feral about you and that unblinking, wary stare you’re giving him. Looking at how you stand, feet shoulder-length apart and entirely on edge, you’re like a tightly wound coil, ready to spring at the slightest hint of danger. He walks over into your space, wrinkling his nose in slight distaste but otherwise not reacting to your smell. There’s not much to you, he thinks. You’re small, a bit on the scrawny side from having to tough it out for so long, and all of the strength is in your arms from what he can see peeking out under the flesh shawl. When he gets into your space – your face about reaches his wide, barrelled chest, but only just.

 

“You don’t look like one of those Kingdom mooks,” he said bluntly, finally addressing you directly. It jars you out of your vaguely fugue-like state. “I don’t think their little play-pretend game fits whatever this shit is,” he chuckled.

 

“…” You consider your words carefully at first, because you’re woefully outnumbered, and while you came willingly, the dynamic could change in an instant, but it’s hard to navigate this mental fog. You absolutely want to give a damn, but the overpowering feeling of rejection – like you’d lost your purpose entirely, was overwhelming and did little good for your self-preservation. “-That’s because I’m not,” you said carefully.

 

Negan bristles in surprise at the traveller’s brogue that leaves your lips but otherwise doesn’t react, but now he’s utterly intrigued. He glanced down and saw the bag sagging at your side, before notice it beginning to drip a strange, dark substance that wasn’t quite blood, but definitely had to be some sort of disgusting.

 

“Where you from then, doll?” there’s a confident, vaguely Southern drawl in his tone that isn’t overtly noticeable, but he manages to sound demanding even when being casual. You catch his eyes lingering on your neck – like he’s looking for something.

 

It’d make sense, since the capital city had been annexed and repurposed into New Richmond by The New Frontier, and he had no real information beyond vague reports because of how much further out from his control they are geographically. He knows they brand though, and that they all brand in the same place.

 

“Not the New Frontier,” you say pointedly, watching as he blinks in surprise what you so easily read through his actions, despite how… vaguely out of touch you seemed. There’s something cold and gritty about your tone, it’s impatient, and you don’t waste or mince your words. Negan would call it downright disrespectful, but after getting your measure, he isn’t sure if you had the mental presence of mind to curb your attitude and realise just how much danger you had the potential to be in. The fact you’d come willingly spoke volumes of that, because you either had to be incredibly brave or incredibly stupid to saunter into the lion’s den of your own volition.

 

“Far,” you said shortly “-farther than The Kingdom,” there’s palpable distaste when you mention the place because you cannot help but associate it with Harry and Emma and it’s all too fresh and overwhelming for you to begin to sort out, so quite simply; you don’t. How much do you tell these people, anyway? You didn’t know what the relationship between all the settlements was, but the fact you had no real ties to any was probably the best thing to have going for you.

 

Your answers provided Negan with a few things though. One, you had enough geographical awareness to know of the other settlements as far as at least New Richmond, which meant you were as well travelled as your voice suggested. Secondly, you’re perceptive enough to know what he is looking for by simply following his silent gaze, so no matter how absentminded your glazed-over eyes seemed. This meant you were not to be written-off as someone who had shattered under the psychological burden of surviving, you were fairly obviously _cracked,_ but not broken.

 

“I’m with people who move, we don’t…stick,” you said shortly – the idea of a community was a nice one, but you’d learned your lesson from Prescott and so many others. Few can last, you can spend years building them up in the wake of The Collapse and all it can take is one mismanaged breach of security, one little mistake, and an entire empire can crumble. In the case of the airstrip community – Prescott, their only crime had been that they were decent people, and had suffered under the boot of the Frontier and their undercover raids and in doing so, proved to you that you could do everything right, and it could all still fall to shit. Staying here probably wouldn’t be any smarter than staying at The Kingdom.

 

“The Kosovo,” – when his expression didn’t shift, you did your best not to seem relieved. Idris was not one with many friends and allies.

 

“So why were you at The Kingdom?” he pressed, but his tone seemed more curious than anything. You watched as he swung up a large bat and nestled it over his left shoulder, the barbed wire glistening under the light of the furnace. He’s a casually intimidating man – and you still don’t know his name at this point, but you do not quail, and instead meet his stare past your dirt-lined forehead between strands of dark hair unblinkingly.

 

“Rest,” there’s that displeasure wheedling into your tone again “-the storm was coming, I had no choice.”

 

Maybe if you’d have just kept riding like you originally wanted, you could have braved out the storm and maybe this whole Darling situation wouldn’t have….

 

_‘Selfish. Didn’t you see how happy he was? Selfish girl.’_

“You didn’t like it there?” there’s something too casual about his tone, the way his lips quirked and his eyes glittered like he was _humouring_ your stinking presence. Not even Jared had quite managed to do that and he had no respect for anybody, and Idris had known much better than to treat you like anything less than his equal, and so you found this leather-clad man’s mannerisms beyond grating. The God-given sense that told you to be scared of someone who just burned the flesh clean off of someone’s face with a dandy smile was non-existent as you stared up at him, jaw set and stubbornly strong.

 

“No,” your voice is taking on a harder, colder and more impatient edge, but what Negan wants to know is why you would willingly come along with Gary and so easily give up a much easier environment to survive in. The Sanctuary had far more to offer in Negan’s opinion, but there was no disputing the rustic appeal of The Kingdom and the fact that at heart, Ezekiel was a soft touch and would prove easier to manipulate into having an easier life there than the Sanctuary. Negan’s people are considerably more cutthroat, and yet you forsook one for the other.

 

“Not a fan of their little sideshow? Or just their ‘king’?” if either of the other members of the Sanctuary still present are surprised by the line of questioning, they don’t show it, but inwardly, Gary is utterly relieved. You’ve captured his boss’s attentions enough that he’s asking about you, which means dependant on your answers, you just might stay, which means he’s reeled in a potential asset, which _always_ looks good. It is good for one’s longevity in such a place to periodically remind the leader why you’re good to have around, after all.

 

The mockery in Negan’s tone as he uses the word ‘king’ doesn’t go amiss, and you don’t bother hiding your distaste. You hadn’t so far, after all – and would prove that you had no loyalty to any particular place and therefore none to whoever didn’t like them. That’s how communities functioned now, they relied on commerce, trade, relations and scavenging and there are allies as well as enemies. You’d cut off enough beginner communities, cutting them from the head and unearthing them from root and all at the behest of Idris Bequiri to know this firsthand.

 

“Fuck the king,” you cut through Negan just as soon as the word leaves his mouth, swallowing his sentence whole with your complete and utter disregard and distaste for the man. It’s not even that you don’t like Ezekiel, but the manner in which The Kingdom functions put you at unease and it was hard not to shoulder the bitterness of the Darling reunion onto everything associated with that place.

 

So you don’t fight it, and let the resentment fill you from foot to throat.

 

A lesser man would have flinched at the sudden tone raise, your voice cold, and reminding him of stone shattering as your dry lips curled into a snarl.

 

A vaguely amused sort of smile begins to stretch over Negan’s face as he looks at you. Gary did his best not to be floored by the attitude you take towards the man as you speak. Someone smarter might have at least tempered their disgust.

 

“Fuck the king,” you say in a quieter, and more humbled tone when you realise how rough and loud you had been. “And fuck his kingdom, fuck his horses, fuck his swords, fuck his attitude, fuck his delusions, fuck his good grace and fuck his custom. He invited me in so he wouldn’t have to shoot me on sight because I had their runners shitting in their britches. At least if he’d met me with a sword or a gun I’d have understood that, and it’d have been more trustworthy than his invitation to stay.”

 

Of course. Ezekiel wasn’t blind either, he could have seen what Gary had seen, and what Negan was seeing – the capability and the quiet power in your humble form. The words you’re saying though – you don’t trust his kindness and you’d have rather have been tossed in a prison and given the rough survivor treatment because you could have understood that.

 

Pity, Ezekiel should have known when to drop the act, else you probably may have stayed – Negan mused.

 

“You’d prefer a blade to the throat?” Negan wondered, still amused – apparently your rough candour was striking all of the right notes, instead of pissing him off. Disrespectful tones in Negan’s presence were a risky choice at best, suicidal at worst, but it seemed you were in luck. Had you not been a woman, it might have not played so well in your favour, Gary is vaguely aware of the fact that the man reels in his agitation and his harshness for the fairer sex.

 

“It wouldn’t be the first,” you groused, calling him out bluntly for his own roving eyes which had stuck to your neck in search of The New Frontier’s choice of branding. They liked to scar each other deeply with their own symbol, pressed into seared flesh with the tip of a knife into the deep of the neck. There was no branding there, no – but something else. A long cut. 

 

“Might not even be the last,” you shrug under the shawl. Your tone suggests you don’t exactly trust the people you’ve blindly followed to their base, but the blasé nature almost suggests you don’t even care.

 

“But there’s a predictability in the people that draw their weapon first and ask questions later. Ezekiel worked back to front. He’s irregular. I don’t trust irregularity. But I know why I was invited to follow your people back here though. For reasons that make more sense. So here I am.”

 

Oh, now Negan would be lying if he said he wasn’t completely fascinated by your clinical tone, and your distaste for the kindness that had been shown you at The Kingdom. In fact, Negan starts chuckling a little to cover up his discomfort, there is something unsettling about you in the way that there was about Carl Grimes, but something…. worse – more far gone. An absence of a vital slice of humanity.

 

“Hear that shit, Gary? More sense between her ears then men twice her fucking age,” Negan chortled.

 

Your eyes narrowed, exactly how old did he think you were? Was that what was amusing him? Of course, the shawl hides much, and your height isn’t too impressive, but you’re hardly baby-faced.

 

“Well, let me tell you young lady, you’ve made probably… the best choice you could possibly fucking make,” Negan smiled – only for you to cut him down again for a second time.

 

“I’m not staying. I just need somewhere to recuperate that’s _not_ The Kingdom,” you said icily “-I will stay. I will recover, tool-up and assist in what needs to be done to make up for whatever supplies I take and your good grace if you let me stay. Then _I will leave_.”

 

Silence.

 

Negan’s form leans backwards slightly as he rocks on his feet, letting out a louder laugh – right from his gut this time, like you’d told the world’s funniest joke. You frown, and glance at Gary, whose expression doesn’t change or tell you anything.

 

“Look at the big brass pair on you!” he chuckled “-you really have no idea who the fuck I am, do you?”

 

 _‘Oh great. Another idiot with an illusion of grandeur’_ – you sighed inwardly, still you’re in said idiot’s compound, and so you didn’t want to push your luck by calling him one to his face when whether you walk out alive or not is entirely dependent on this person liking you.

 

“Another self-styled king?” you decide to try your luck, if only because it seemed to be getting a positive reaction so far. Your abrasiveness didn’t often settle well with people, but this guy seemed to enjoy it, in some perverse way. “Some Billy Big-Balls who I’m guessing is the _head_ Billy Big-Balls which is why – Tattoos over there,” you thumb to Gary crudely “-was the one who had to nut up and step forward because the others are too scared of you. I suppose ironing the wrinkles out of some poor bastard’s face will send that sort of message though.”

 

“Well you’re right,” he replied, once he managed to stop laughing. “-But my name isn’t Billy,” he smirked.

 

“I’m Negan,” he said emphatically, like it was supposed to mean something to you. It didn’t. But, he supposed – there was time enough to fix that. “-and you...” he didn’t wait for you to introduce yourself in turn “-Seem to be in the habit of pushing your luck.”

 

You frowned at him and fell silent.

 

_‘Shit, maybe I misread. Maybe he’s pissed off.’_

“Lucky for you I like it when a woman knows what she wants,” – you weren’t really sure what he was getting at with that, but the man had a crude and sexual sort of nature that fell naturally into place with his alpha nature.

 

“But I’m guessing that’s not the case everywhere you’ve stopped,” his free hand idly went to his own, freshly shaven neck and idly rubbed in thought while meeting your stare briefly.

 

Your eyes narrow at him again.

 

“You must have a pretty good lay of the land if you’ve been as far as New Richmond,” he elaborates when you don’t take his subtle bait.

“I made a lot of pit stops, not all of them wise. I’m still on the fence about this one,” you said shortly “-that’s why I know what you were looking for just now when you were staring holes into my neck, or I’m just that fucking pretty,” you sneer a little, because you know how unappealing you look right now, and it draws a small grin from the other man who seemed to like acidic tones.

 

“You were with the New Frontier?” Negan asked, only for you to tilt your head back so he could get clear view of your neck, pushing some of your long, tangled hair back.

 

“Briefly. Those wankers slit my throat too deeply to want to stay,” there’s a small red slit that must have narrowly missed some vital blood vessels or something, because it shows up as clear red against your complexion and would likely scar over much the same. Negan doesn’t bother to hide the fact he’s slightly awed by your callousness about such a thing, he’s not even sure Rick’s boy is quite so brittle.

 

“So, what brings you out this far that’s worth your throat slit? It’s in your interest to answer, by the way. I’m not nearly as accommodating as Ezekiel with strangers,” he said. At the very least, his intentions were plain.

 

This attitude you could understand and despite the abrasiveness of your nature. His words tell you that you need to be absolutely forthcoming with him if you were to have what you want. Food. Supplies. Sleep, maybe even a wash if at all possible. Chance would be a fine thing.

 

“Business,” you said shortly “-it’s concluded now, but someone is expecting me to let them know. Idris is very particular sort of man,” he doesn’t react to the name, which is another sign of relief. It was good to be sure that the Kosovo hadn’t stepped on any toes this far out into Virginia.

 

For context, you hold up the dripping bag at your side, which had been steadily making a small puddle of foul, viscous substance on the floor near your feet.

 

“Unfortunately, it’s a sort of time-sensitive thing, which is why I’m fully intending to leave when I can,”

 

At Negan’s look, you simply flip open the cotton flap and immediately, he’s greeted with the sight of tufts of hair. You don’t bother taking the whole head out, but just enough to reveal the thick slit which had pierced through the forehead.

 

He does his best not to bristle at the fact you’re just carrying it around, quite casually, and subtly glances to Gary – as if to silently ask if he knew just how _cracked_ you really were. Gary doesn’t react though, and his lack of reaction tells Negan everything.

 

He knew about the head in the bag, but still thought you were worth bringing back.

 

“He stole from my people so I tracked him out here, Idris likes to know his enemies really are dead, and are destroyed right at the root, and I’m afraid he’s getting a little…” you grimace at what you can only call “rot fluid” soaking your bag.

 

“Juicy.”

 

He gets the sense you’re from quite further than even New Richmond’s general area, and you can tell that he’s fishing for information while judging you under the intensity of those dark eyes. Negan, to his credit, doesn’t react to the decapitated head, but does find the word ‘juicy’ to be the thing that makes his lip curl in distaste. Ugh.

 

“I see that,” Negan grimaced “-that’s pretty fucking gross, you’re just carrying that around with you? Fucking really? What’s it worth to the man, or you, that you’d go out this far to kill somebody anyway?”

 

“He ran, but not fast enough,” you said coldly “-And I need antihistamines, supplies. I’d rather not be sneezing every five minutes if I can help it. Food too. Stealing shit is tantamount to a fucking death sentence and that's exactly what this shitstain did. You can think this is gross all you damn well please and maybe it is, but it was necessary. I turn him in, I get the stuff I need,” you shut the flap. Gary did his best not to react, he could just see the image of you riding that flesh-strewn skeletal horse, chasing the man down like a rat from on high. The way you spoke so casually about him, like he was just a roach under your boot – he’d heard worse and yet for some reason, it still put a shiver down his spine coming out of such a young mouth.

 

Again, that cold, chilly edge to your tone.

 

“Fucker had it coming.”

 

Well when you put it like that, Negan is hard pressed to disagree. It’s easy to forget behind the walls of his little empire that for struggling, smaller, marauding groups – taking supplies was the same as putting a knife to their throats if the rest of the area had been picked clean. Yet, in the grand scheme of things, a head for some very rudimentary medicine – not even something as valuable as antibiotics – and you were so ready to kill.

 

It seemed almost petty.

 

“Oh, I don’t doubt it,” he takes on a softer tone. You’re dangerous, he realises – you’re ready to kill for very little but you are sharp and reasoned in your behaviours. “You seem like you have a good head on your shoulders,” he smiled at his own joke.

 

“I’m sure it was very appropriate, but you don’t have to cross half the state with a juicy head for some fever medicine,” he said flatly “-we have that in droves. It’s small potatoes to us - and antibiotics. Vicodin. Valium. You name it, we probably have it or some shit just as good,”.

 

You’re silent at this – you could believe it. They had a good, strong wall of roamers stuck to makeshift pikes, their walls were strong, their trucks were armoured and they were of a much more brutal nature than the settlements under their foot.

 

“And if we don’t have it, we fucking get it,” he said airily “-so if the head in the bag is what’s stopping you from sticking anywhere, ditch it. The way I hear it is, you’re pretty hard up if you’re willing to go all of this way for a few sneezing tablets and some food. You look like shit too by the way,” he said cheerfully.

 

You did your best not to be insulted, but you know it to be true.

 

“So stick around, and see how you like it,” you wanted to say you didn’t need a community, because the Kosovo had taught you just how easily they fell, and that the best thing for you to do was to remain fluid, constantly moving. “You don’t look like you’re in a position to say no,”.

 

When you realise he’s actually waiting for a response, you frown, and reply in quiet confusion.

 

“I was fine before you and I will continue to be fine long after,” your ego couldn’t handle the bruising as well as you thought, because you bite out your response before you can think to stop it. “I’ve gotten through rougher patches than this,”.

 

Negan raised a brow at you and made no attempt to hide the fact he was looking you up and down. You’re smelly, dirty, unwashed and covered in flesh and blood, you’re thin in the face and don’t look well-rested at all. He very slowly moves the free hand that isn’t holding his bat until it’s hovering near your face, like he’s very silently asking for permission to enter your personal space. Normally, he isn’t one to care, but you’re so terribly feral that it feels like the equivalent to sticking his hand into wolf’s cage. He half expects you might sniff his hand like a dog before judging whether or not he’s okay, instead, your eyes just follow his fingers dangerously, like you might bite them clean off his hand if they get close to your face.

 

Instead, he’s just reaching for the closest tuft of dark, knotted hair and gently pulling out a small glob of bloody dirt with his thumb and forefinger, face absent of disgust. He almost brushed it behind your ear, but that really did feel like it might be a trifle too intimate to try with someone so outwardly terrifying.

 

“Is this what fine looks like?” he chuckled again “-from where I’m standing, you’re pretty fucking far from fine.”

 

You don’t react, of course you don’t look fine compared to him and his survivors. You’ve been out on the road for a while and it shows, you had exactly one night in a community where you could have cleaned yourself up and you’d gotten as far as eating a full meal and sleeping before you set out to earn your keep and get away from that Darling situation.

 

“You can stay,” he said, after a considering moment. “-Gary’s never steered me wrong before. Someone will get you sorted out and tell you how things work around here. I’m sure you’ll like it here, if you give it a chance,”.

 

Your response, instead of one of gratitude – hints again at that earlier impatience. Your complete and utter lack of fear after having stumbled on his grandiose iron-to-the-face-display, at what he’d argue is one of his more intimidating displays, was disconcerting. Whether or not he could control you was also a matter of disconcertion, since even the people you apparently worked for preferred to have you on a long leash.

 

“Who gives a dusty fuck if I like it here or not?” you said bluntly, making him lean away from you in surprise, that amused smile gracing his face again.

 

“Not you, that’s for sure. I’m here ‘cos it looks like I’m good at killing. And I am, so why don’t you tell me how you want me earning my stay?” that’s how you and Idris got on anyway, and if this man was seeking to snatch you out from the Kosovo’s employ, he was going to have to address you with some honesty instead of this strange act of verisimilitude. You liked bluntness, honesty, no frills and harshness, and let this be known.

 

“I like your attitude,” he chuckled “-it’s fucking scary, and I can appreciate that, and I do. So, no bullshit,” his bat sags at his side as he swings it idly, taking a more relaxed stance now that he thinks that you’re at least a little more endeared towards staying on his side. “-We have things you need, and you look like you can be of use to us.”

 

He paused “-we always need more people willing to go out and scavenge, or muscle. We’re managing a lot of space, and there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to keep it going, but it takes a very specific kind of person to make it out here.”

 

Negan turned to Gary, and gave him a reassuring smile that silently told him he’d done well. He’d picked a young little cutthroat out and he was more than delighted, though the attitude could do with some housebreaking, he couldn’t say he hated it. It was refreshing, if a little troubling.

 

“And I think you’ll do nicely,” he smirked.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

Gary thinks you’re a cantankerous, agitated and foul-mouthed young woman. It’s little wonder that the boss took a shine to you, you probably remind him of himself in some regard. Unfortunately, for someone of no known standing in the Sanctuary, this wouldn’t exactly make you popular, and it seemed like you were in no desire for friends in the wake of leaving Darling behind.

 

Indeed, it felt much like you were lashing out at everything and everybody in your path. There was a flagrant lack of respect in how you conducted yourself and it wasn’t endearing you to anyone you’d met thus far. Gary, however, seemed to be keeping an eye on you – making sure you were dealt with.

 

He cannot help thinking however, that standing outside the showers, holding a towel and fresh clothes was slightly beneath his station, considering he was more often the right hand of a very important task. Sometimes he was at Negan’s side, other times, he was assisting Gavin, but this? This was just…menial, and Gary can hardly remember the last time he did something so pointless.

 

Standing outside, he can just see the water running red, then brown, then black. There was a sound of a squelch and a splash of a thick tuft of something falling out of your hair that he can see just from the raised door until the skin of your ankles goes several shades lighter.

 

“I’ve got some clothes and a towel,” said Gary gruffly, hearing the shower turn off. He expects a hand to stick out between a half open door and flinches when you swing it open carelessly. He’s not particularly intimidated by naked women, but it’s unexpected. His eyes go wide and his maw hangs open dumbly as you snatch the towel out of his hands without a second thought.

 

“Put your eyes back in you dopey cunt, you look like you haven’t seen a pair of tits before,” you scoffed.

 

It seemed travelling with Harry Darling had made you forget about modesty around men, or maybe you’d never had it.

 

“Erm, sorry?” for once, Gary actually didn’t know what to say, but felt his ears burning all the same.

 

You roll your eyes, and take the clothing without question. Yeah, there was a reason you weren’t good in communities outside of the rough and tumble Kosovo, you’d mostly forgotten how exactly to function in them.

 

“There’s no charge for these, by the way,” he added – since you’d only just gotten your head around their strange, points-based economy.

 

Glancing down, you frown at the sight once you secure the towel around yourself. It’s a long, black, dress-like shirt that’d reach your thighs, and what you can only describe as highly impractical yoga pants. Yoga pants? _Really?_

 

Well, they were comfortable, but nice, hard, selvage jeans were usually the best option for someone who walks among the dead as much as you. It’s a strangely feminine outfit, and not one you’re very much used to, but it’ll do in a pinch while everything else of yours get washed.

 

“Really?” honestly, you just expected to be in some sort of debt to the man until you went out on a run or something.

 

Gary just shrugged, and began walking you in the direction of where you’re staying.

 

“Negan sends his regards.”

 

 

 

 


	3. Too Far Gone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reader is not a great person, but is there such a thing as a good person in the end of the world? As for the name of the chapter, I suppose I'm trying to document that plummet into depravity and that slow return to being human but make no mistake, this is a Reader/Negan trash fic, just kinda slowburn ish

Storms ||

**CHAPTER THREE**

_“Too Far Gone.”_

 

Jared doesn’t like you very much, not a lot of people do – but he _especially_ doesn’t seem to like you. Gavin gives you something of a wide berth because he can at least respect the fact you were able to tough it out there on your own. There was something to be said for somebody with the ability to traverse most of the state on their own, and you refrained from any mention of Darling. It’s not like he did you much good apart from being a pair of eyes to do a night watch. The man was more trouble than he was worth. He was _constantly_ getting into shit, Idris despised his very existence and on more than one occasion, he’d bitten off more than he could chew. It was his nature, as was yours to fall in after him. Now, there was no Darling to blame. Everything to come would be trouble entirely of your own doing.

 

“Oh God,” Jared didn’t bother disguising his distaste.

 

“No God,” you smirked “-just me,” tossing in a battered bag into Simon’s van. You hadn’t much sleep, because the idea of sleeping in a place with so many living people was just too odd to shake.

 

You didn’t see much of Negan after your first day here, apart from at a distance, striding from place to place before disappearing completely. That suited you just fine. There was something off-putting about that man and you still couldn’t quite put your finger on it. You rationalised it down to your first and only real impression of him being when he burned some poor schmuck’s face.

 

You’d seen him around, and learned that his name was Mark. He was a pretty sort of boy, burns notwithstanding.

 

“Negan’s orders, she’s with us on raids now,” said Mark pointedly “-if it’s a problem, take it up with him,”.

 

Apparently, he’d slept with one of the boss’s wives – and already that put a bad taste in your mouth. You’re not surprised, of course. When you get to remake society, you get to make the rules, you just cannot help being unimpressed by the fact he’s like any other man. Negan sounded larger than life when you’d spoken to Gavin about him. Yet, the idea of him having a harem didn’t project this image of alpha-like male virility as perhaps intended, but rather made you picture him like an unneutered dog.

 

Wisely, you kept this thought to yourself.

 

“Gotta earn my keep, even you can’t have a problem with that,” you said coolly. “I know I don’t make the best first impression but I don’t usually hang around long enough for it to matter.”

 

There, the closest Jared would probably ever get to an apology from you.

 

Jared’s eyes settled on your new getup, the crisp long shirt and the yoga pants and instantly he could tell you’d had some sort of acceptance from his boss or you wouldn’t have them, as you had no points to speak of.

 

“Whatever,” Jared grunted, you supposed that might be grudging acceptance, but you’re not sure. There is a troupe of three armoured trucks leaving from the main compound. One was managed by a similarly burned-faced blond called Dwight, then an older man called Wade, and then yours – a Middle-Eastern woman by the name of Arat. You quite like her, because she’s rather like you and not just in complexion or by virtue of the fact she’s a woman, but she has the same sort of cold indifference you do. The only fault you can really pick is the unwavering devotion to Negan. For a moment, you wonder if it’s like you and Idris – but it cannot be. She keeps her mouth shut far too much when you were more known for stepping all over your boss’s toes at every opportunity. No. They’re all too obedient, and you don’t like that much.

 

“Yeah, yeah, try not to leak with joy Goldilocks,” you sighed, earning a derisive snort from Arat in the driver’s seat. Jared was actually not bad looking, he was a skinny, early-thirties guy with the scruffy beginnings of a beard, grey-blue eyes and long brown hair that poured down his back. If he wasn’t such a bully, he’d probably be attractive.

 

Jared glared at you when you called him that, before quietly reloading his gun. You supposed he might be trying to be intimidating when he does it without breaking eye contact with you.

 

Personally, you just think his ‘angry face’ looks a bit constipated. You weren’t very good at making friends, you decided. Insulting people? Yes. Darling had gotten used to it, gave as good as he got, and most of your friendship could be sustained on quips and humour alone for most the part since there was no other option beyond travel in raw silence. Which for five years, would have been untenable.

 

Going out on a raid with the Saviors was a lot like what you imagined a first day of work on no rest to feel like. You barely know the names of your co-workers, you forget them or mix them up on occasion and are lowest on the totem pole. Everyone manning a truck is a lieutenant – Wade, Arat and Dwight, they had two to three people in each truck as far as you knew for raids. Wade’s team had the man who recruited you in it. Tattoos – Gary? Yeah, him. You don’t recognise the other guy in his team, but he has a stupid beanie, so you just call him Beans.

 

“You can at least try to remember names,” there’s amusement in Mark’s tone, he’s a…shit. What did he do again? Guard?

 

“I could,” you said, reaching into your new but rather battered second-hand bag since the last one had become soaked through with body rot. “But that requires me giving a damn,” you’re smiling, or trying to at any rate.

 

“The mouth on you,” Mark shook his head “-you want to be careful. It’ll land you in trouble eventually.”

 

“Implying it hasn’t already. I’ve already had my throat slit, you’d be hard pressed to beat that,” you fire back, tilting your head back to show it off while sticking your tongue out ever so slightly. Mark’s trying to be friendly, and you can appreciate that.

 

“I wouldn’t brag about being so annoying somebody tried to kill you,” Jared snarked.

 

“The keywords in that sentence being _they tried,_ they didn’t get very far,” you give him the kind of smile that has far too many teeth in it to be charming. The thing that sticks out the most when you emerge out of the truck when it stops at the raiding point, is that you’re the youngest there. You hadn’t spotted a Savior under the age of twenty-five or even close. Mark and Jared maybe, but they were late 20s, early 30s probably.

 

“Play nicely children,” Arat said sharply, rolling her eyes and striding out ahead of you. She had an M16 strapped to her, and most the others carried similarly large firearms. This wasn’t a quiet, swift operation, it seemed. These people are all about intimidation, and intimidation meant ridiculously oversized, scary looking guns.

 

What an unimaginative way of frightening people, you think.

 

“You want one?” Mark motioned to one of the rifle stacks. You say no, mostly because you’re only experienced with a few kinds of large rifle and not seeing a bayonet anywhere in the stack, you refuse it politely.

 

He doesn’t think you look like much, with a short stature and not much weight to throw around. Strong forearms, he thinks – and biceps, enough that they’re not particularly feminine. The yoga pants and long shirt don’t make for particularly intimidating look.

 

“More of a bayonet type,” you said shortly, before slapping a hand to the weapon’s belt which was snugly fitted around your thighs. Mark glanced to it and saw a small, fitted, classic, long-barrelled revolver in a small belt. "Got this handsome thing,"

 

“Suit yourself,” Mark shrugged, watching as you jogged on ahead to catch up with Arat and Jared. “-Don’t know how much damage you can do with that little thing though,”.

 

“It’s not size, Blondie, it’s how you use it,” you said sagely, earning a derisive snort from Arat. The others spilled out of their trucks – and you caught sight of Dwight and Wade’s teams. You spot Stupid Beanie Guy, who you shortened to “Beans,” – Dwight, however, was also blond, and left you in a conundrum. Mark didn’t seem to mind you though, and amused himself with you trying to come up with names for people you don’t know very well.

 

Mark is your Darling 2.0 in terms of somebody who takes your attitude into stride and banters at least a little with you, which makes this “first day of work” feel a lot less awkward for you anyway. You caught sight of some taller forms ahead of you, before feeling your heart drop into your gut for a moment.

 

“Hold on, why is he here?” you ask in a quiet murmur, eyes frozen on the sight of the barbed-wire bat, which you’d come to know as Lucille fairly quickly, being as he’d never parted from it all of the times you’d seen him flitting from place to place. “He’s the boss, doesn’t he have better shit to do?” you whisper.

 

“He doesn’t sit on his ass all day; besides, I reckon everyone could do with a reminder of what’s beyond the walls, or you get all soft,” Mark shrugged.

 

“Don’t have to tell me, I’ve been living outside of walls for five or so years,” you shot back, before frowning at one of the men ahead of you and jogging over. “One sec Blondie,”.

 

“Yo, Goldilocks!” you called out rudely. Jared kept on walking, pointedly ignoring you in favour of Wade, causing you to slap him on the back of his shoulder.

 

“For fuck’s sake you’re going to lose half your bullets, your fasten is loose,” _that_ makes Jared turn around and stop, blinking in surprise when he sees your hands working the long stream of bullets wrapped around one side of his torso.

 

You fix his bandolier in all of a few moments before giving him a dull slap on the back.

 

“Thank…you?” said Jared slowly, apparently, kindness confused him greatly. You don’t like the guy’s attitude and you think he puts being childish ahead of getting things done if his behaviour at the collection with The Kingdom two days ago had been evidenced to you.  

 

“We’re working together remember? That means getting along or some such shit,” you said with a lazy roll of your eyes.

 

“Where’s your gun?” Jared asked, before sighing and slapping the revolver at your side. It was your baby, you’d had it since you’d joined the Kosovo, and for heaven’s sake, Idris even had it engraved once you’d made your place known. You then make two thumb gestures to the sheathes crossed over your back for the trusty pair of bolo machetes. Lighter than swords, shorter, but just as handy if you know how to use them properly.

 

“Got one, this little lovely does me just fine,” you glance over to the others and give them a small wave which isn’t met back, causing you to frown. You reached into your bag, and pulled out a thick, firm leather coil, ignoring the look on Jared’s face as you did and clipped it to your side.

 

“What’s it with everyone telling me I need a big gun?” you asked nobody in particular, and nobody deigned you with an answer. Had you braved whatever you thought of the man and skipped ahead to where Negan and Dwight were, they might have, though.

 

“Well what the hell you gonna do with that thing?” Jared chuckled mirthlessly “-whip the enemy and tell them they’ve been bad, bad boys?”

 

You raise a brow and take the coil out from your hip and wrap your fingers around the study, plastic handle. It had taken a while to learn to use, two years in fact – and in that time under dedicated tutelage from Idris’s brother, Alban – you’d proven to be extremely effective with it. The idea being that it could do something to bridge the divide between yourself and larger walkers. Going for the shins then the head was a good enough technique, but if you want some range between yourself a truly, hulking, big bastard of pure rot – being able to reel it in from afar was a good option to have.

 

“Well, now we all know what Goldilocks fantasizes about,” you scoffed “-trust me, every dickhead who’s ever made a whip joke after seeing this thinks he’s the first to make a whip joke. I’ve heard them _all,”._

“So you might try opening a book and being a bit different – they’ve been doing a lot more than get kinky bastards off for the past couple of centuries, these things can strip the bark off a fucking tree if used right,” you said pointedly. If Jared still took issue with it, he’d soon be proven wrong when he could see its effectiveness in the field.

 

“Say – where we headed anyway? Nobody’s actually told me anything. For all your bitching about my attitude, you’re a bunch of antisocial bastards,” you sniffed – drawing another stifled snort from Arat.

 

“We’re headed for a small travelling community, usually stick to trade routes and sticking people up, they’ve been causing a stink, so we’re going to straighten things out,” you’re not sure what constituted ‘small’ in Arat’s world if the boss was coming along, especially for a team of three trucks with a bundle of people in each. You fall back to where Mark is and muse you could feasibly go through this whole raid without so much as talking to the boss. You honestly felt like you could do with some actual sleep and some hard liquor, some free, soft No-Harry-Darling-Whatsoever peace. It felt like you had to reconstitute your entire being now that you’d just left him in a single moment.

 

“They’ve set up in an old motor inn,” Mark supplied “-so they’ll probably have some stuff too.”

 

He looks at you for a moment, before frowning, and putting his hand on your shoulder.

 

“You should try and hang back for this, it’s your first raid, and we do things a specific kinda way here.”

 

You frowned, but took the advice. You’re not sure if Mark expects you to be scared or not, but instead you’re just standing around feeling a bit bone-idle, playing with the Kevlar tip of the bullwhip and listening to how the Saviors try to negotiate.

 

It’s not really much of one, because negotiations are a lot more two-sided. This deal is ‘submit or suffer’ – which you suppose, is an improvement over Idris, where you’re much more likely to die because of the man’s vile temper than simply _suffer._

 

Looking around, you see the neon “Ed’s Pump & Dump,” sign has long since gone out, and was bent at an angle – like a vehicle had smashed into the pole holding it up and sped off. The walls are decent though, they’re high and reinforced with a hard layer of wood and the beginnings of brickwork around the eastern side.

 

There’s some barbed wire around the lower parts, probably to stop people from just climbing in, but all Negan has to do to enter is knock, and smile.

 

 _“Daddy’s home!”_ Negan’s voice echoes all the way to even where you and Mark are standing. He’s a man who not only manages to fill a room with just his personality, but has a shout that carries for miles.

 

 _‘What a terrifying amount of power,’_ you muse – Idris doesn’t have that sort of ability unless the entirety of the Kosovo are behind him.  He’s a scary man, but his presence is much quieter in its deadliness. Negan comes across a bit like the big bad wolf, baring his teeth outside the gate and ready to blow the place to shreds with the sheer amount of force he has with him. Idris was much more like dripping poison, seeping into the cracks of a community and swallowing it whole from the inside. The Saviors are not at all subtle, but this method of knocking doors before blowing them down and demanding half of everything people have seemed to be working rather well for them.

 

 _They must have the numbers –_ you think, because apparently this group you’re in constitutes “small” to Arat.

 

A small woman who has the face of a child comes out first, with matted brown hair and a man holding her hand. He’s tall, stocky and has an anxious expression on his face. Two more follow them. First a teenager – whose probably only two years younger than you, and doesn’t look like either of the couple. Second is a much, much older looking man, the sort you’d associate with the word ‘grandpa’ if somebody handed you a blank sheet of paper and asked you to draw what you thought a grandpa might look like.

 

It’s a horrible moment for it, but Mark notices that you manage to zone out. He isn’t sure how, these sorts of things were always high intensity interactions and carried the risk of open fire, but you looked like you might be asleep standing up. Your eyes are heavy, and in this light he can see how utterly small you look, and how dark circles have begun to appear from nights of poor rest.

 

“Where’s our itsy bitsy Spider?”

 

Mark almost flinched at the suddenness when it was yelled in his general direction. He isn’t really sure if anyone is certain of your name, but he’s heard enough people refer to you as that – a spider – that nobody is questioning it.

 

 _‘Yeah,’_ Mark thought ‘- _She’s small enough. Like a little…spider.’_ He placed a hand on your shoulder, gently shaking you to get your attention. Negan’s grinning, and pointing at you with Lucille in hand, catching your worn-out stare when your eyes pry open and you take a few short strides over. Mark cannot assuage this feeling of discomfort when he watches you walk.

 

It’s not that he’s particularly invested in you, he doesn’t even really know you. There’s just something unsettling about watching someone a few years his younger walk past the lanky forms of the other Saviors. You shouldn’t be there, you shouldn’t belong.

 

 It’s a test – Mark realised quickly. Normally, if you’d ascended the ranks through competence, you might have gotten away with standing quietly beside himself and Gary but the fact is, you hadn’t. You’re there because Negan said that you apparently belong there, and that the accumulation of any points you earn will be because of contributions done beyond the walls of the compound. The term ‘visitor’ had been thrown around, and when asked, you treated the whole deal as a temporary sort of thing pending reconsideration, like you’d been subcontracted from the Kosovo.

 

Tool up, replace what you take by working with them and then leave if you choose to – that’s the plan. It’s not something Mark had ever heard of anybody doing, but whatever it was that you’d said to the boss when you’d met him, it was enough that he was apparently _humouring_ this deal.

 

Still, that left you without points and without rank, putting you even lower than Mark, who was merely a guard in a field of deeply trusted lieutenants. The fact the boss has picked you out almost seems cruel, but he has to justify your presence somehow. There were too many questions that needed to be put to bed.

 

“Sorry, are we boring you?” Negan’s voice dripped with sarcasm as he watched you sidle up to where he was standing, poorly smothering your tiredness. He rolled his eyes and didn’t let you answer, pointing to the terrified cluster of people in front of you with Lucille. “It’s time for you to pull your weight,” irritation giving way for his normal, cocksure tones.

 

“Kill something, doll.” Negan smiled at you, before taking a step back and lowering his bat.

 

Well, fuck.

 

Your eyes glance over the people shovelled out in front –  and over their shoulders, there’s people pressed against the windows of the motor inn, in mute terror. That must mean the people who stumbled out to deal with the Saviors are the leader figures. For a moment, you regret dozily zoning out for so long. The man and woman look beyond terrified, and the old man is stuck staring at his shoes, shoulders drawn up to his ears in quiet discomfort.

 

Then, your eyes settle on the boy in the school jersey, which read _Blue Mountain State –_ he’s gangly and almost reaches the height of the man. Whatever had already happened must have set Negan off, because you cannot think of why he’d ask you to kill on command.

 

 _‘It’s a test,’_ you realise a little later than Mark, whether it’s to see how willing you are to kill or how willing you are to follow orders, it’s something Negan needs to know, so he’s putting you on the spot.

 

_Kill something, doll._

Hmph. That’s not a problem, usually – hell, Idris considered it blood sport. You could even hear the Kosovo’s words echo in your head, as though berating you for your unusual hesitance. Vrasni mirë, dhe shpesh – _kill well, and often._

A tense wave of silence followed Negan’s words as your hand ghosted over the weapon’s belt and you surveyed the smatter of survivors. The hesitance doesn’t go amiss, and you can feel the burning intensity of everyone’s stares before you frown.

 

There’s just something a bit pointless-seeming about this, there’s usually a reason for somebody to have to die by your hand or Idris would provide one, but this? Scaremongering, was all it was.

 

“Pick someone, you have six seconds – if you don’t, I will,” you said simply, reaching behind you and grasping the handle of one of your machetes with an impatient sigh.

 

 _“Six,”_ you ignore the look of abject disbelief.

 

There’s a harness that crosses over your chest and holds two long, crossed sheathes over your back which tower up to your hair and then some, further dwarfing you in Negan’s eyes. For a moment, he thinks you’re going to go for the classic revolver snuggled into your thigh, and is surprised that for someone who has to pause and deliberate over their kill, that you would go for a much messier, crueller option. Arat would kill instantly, and indiscriminately, but there’s something oddly focused in your usually hazy gaze.

 

 _“Five,”_ the old man actually tried to volunteer himself, but he’s pushed back by the woman.

 

The Motor Inn survivors start blathering among themselves for all of a moment before you take one step forward and hold the stare of the woman, like you might have already chosen her. It’s enough to spurn the man and his wife to sink their fingers into the biceps of the teenager and push him forward between the pair of them, holding him at either side.

 

_“Four,”_

 

“Him,” the man said quickly while the teenager spluttered, shaking his head and shaking erratically, trying to wriggle out of their grip. “He doesn’t even have anyone here,” he said quickly at your oddly judgemental expression. It took a shockingly small amount of time, and you weren’t quite so sure why it was bothering you.

 

“Dan? W-what? But I – I thought we were good now!” the teenager spluttered. He’s trying to make the older man – Dan – see some kind of reason, but the fact was, someone was going to die, and they’d already designated their sacrificial lamb before you even got to _three._

 

 _‘He’s, what, maybe two or three years younger than me…?’_ He was probably young during the Collapse too, and yet…

 

The way he was shaking and trembling, he could not face the prospect of his own death with any kind of dignity, and you cannot really fault him for that. There’s grown men who’d turn into snivelling babies in an instant if they thought they were going to die. He’s got a soft sort of face, no facial hair despite the best will in the world and doe-brown eyes which squeezed shut in pain as your foot came out and you smashed into his closest shin with purpose.

 

It's swift and forceful, and you’ve more strength in a single leg than some people have in their whole bodies, Arat can tell it just from one look at your thighs and calves.

 

“On your knees then,” your voice cold, curt and clinical, carrying easily over his gentle pleading when the cry of pain subsided. He seems to alternate between trying to reason with Dan, and then with you to spare his life. Dan and his partner kept their hands on his shoulders, willing him to stay where he was after he collapsed onto his knees.

 

_“Please I—“_

 

The bolo machete glints under the Virginia sun, the tip almost nudging the boy’s chin. Whatever the Saviors had done prior while you’d hung back with Mark had probably been more than enough. Taking one cursory look at the disaffected man holding him down, and the slight relief on the woman’s face, that needling feeling of this being entirely wrong hits you again.

 

For a moment, his gentle features bleed into something else. It’s some little rougher with higher cheekbones, a scruffier beard and brooding, blue eyes. For a moment, you don’t really see him – and that dense fugue fog settles over you again. You’re looking through him but not really seeing him, and far more deeply than was proper.

 

‘ _I can’t….’_

 

“Shut up Darling,” your flat voice takes on a vaguely irritated tone, you almost bristle at your own slip.

 

 _‘Fuck, I’m losing it – I’m… really cracking up,’ –_ the teenager’s face is staring back up at you, and his gangly height has him reaching your stomach even when he’s upright on his knees. You’re thankful that Harry’s last name is double in meaning, despite the amount of groan-worthy jokes he’d made about it. Nobody could tell your slip for what it was. The teenager stammers slightly until his jaw shuts with an audible click until he’s just shuddering quietly in place.

 

“Your bleating is pathetic,” _got to get back on track, cannot afford to lose face._ “Enough,” – fair enough if he couldn’t face the idea of dying with any courage, but did he have to sound so pathetic about it?

 

You’re unnecessarily mean, but his small whimper settles it, you cannot stomach this display for much longer. So, you raise the machete and move so quickly he doesn’t have the wherewithal to close his eyes.

 

Arat, standing the closest to your left with Negan parallel to your right, is the first to feel the warm splatter of blood against her kneecaps. Negan didn’t dare blink, if he hadn’t seen it happen for himself, he wouldn’t have believed it. You raise the machete and move it with the fluidity of water, sliding the sharpened edge in one long, clean, swipe above your head. You hit the standing figures instead – running the edge and tip across the soft, unsuspecting flesh of their necks. Finishing, you’re stood with a wide stance, arm holding the blade straight. The blood doesn’t even linger because of the speed of movement, sending it splattering across the concrete and Arat’s trousers.

 

There is a silence that follows, apart from ragged breathes.

 

There’s a twin pair of ungraceful thuds that follow, snapping the teenager out of his wide-eyed daze as his eyes fall on Dan first, his neck bent at such an angle that he can see you’d opened his throat so easily – like a torn open Christmas present. It pools out blood much more violently than the woman from the angle he’d fallen, and begins to pool around the teenager’s knees as he audibly swallows the bile in his throat.

 

 _‘Holy fuck,’ –_ Negan thought. Looking around him, he was surrounded by many competent, seasoned killers. But you? Your movements were fluid, your movements were cold, and he was certain he’d need two strikes to take down two people at best, but you didn’t waste a blow. His Saviors are brutal, well-practiced and competent but you’re _skilled_ to a point where you’ve practically made art of it. Killing two instantly in one blow. His eyes glue themselves to your movements as you gracefully slide the bolo machete into the empty sheath, crossing it on your back with its sibling blade.

 

 _“I don’t…”_ the teenager shuddered, feeling the hand - which was previously wrapped around the handle of your machete, grasp the left of his face. _“-under…stand.”_ he’s confused, and his voice is oddly flat even as his words break for his panicked breathing.

 

“What is your name, boy?” that tired impatience is back in your tone and any sympathy you might have shown disappeared. Negan wonders if, for a moment, that you’ve forgotten your audience. There is that deep intensity in your eyes as you keep the boy’s face together, and honestly if you let go, he looks like he might collapse into the sum of his parts.

 

 _“Jay… Jacob,”_ he shivers, fingers wetting with tears and thumb gracing the edge of some snot. You don’t seem to care much, you’re busy melting Jacob under the force of your withering stare.

 

“Today you were very lucky,” your voice drops low, barely louder than a whisper. “I know it might not seem like it, Jacob. But you were,” you let go of his face, and gesture to the parked U-Haul which you had barely enough presence of mind earlier to pick up on the fact it’s where they stored gathered supplies.

 

“Now be a sweet, and unlock that U-Haul,” you finish, taking a step back and watch the boy warble to his feet. He slips almost and almost buckles, his knees actually knock against each other and he has all the grace of a shot deer.

 

Negan comes up to you first, while Arat heads for the U-Haul and stalks behind Jacob like a lanky shadow.

 

He silently surveyed the damage, and practically leers over you without even really meaning to. At first, looking at you without your flesh shawl, he wouldn’t think you half as intimidating. The machete harness crossed over your chest carried the blades in an x-shape across your back but the handles protruded so far up that it only served to make you look that much smaller. When he stands next to you like this and your face is level with his wide chest, the fact you’re such a brutal little creature is so much harder to swallow.

 

“Two people? Aren’t you a little overachiever,” his voice low, and almost dulcet.

 

“You said kill something, but you didn’t say just one, be clearer next time,” you furrow your brow, wondering why he’s latched onto that when he’s so ready to off people as it is, what does it matter if it’s more than one? “My former boss would have had me kill all four of them, old man included, just because.” You give him a little one-armed shrug, before another yawn bubbles out of your throat before you can even stop it.

 

How blasé you seem to treat this would bother him, if he wasn’t guilty of it himself. The difference is, Negan knows why he’s like this. When you do what he does for as long as he had, it’s hard to care about people as much as you should. The rest of it is veneer, it’s part of what makes him the indomitable Negan, but you? You’re exactly half his age, you’re - … how are you this far gone? It’s easy to see why people older and wiser than you have, but you… People your age usually had someone looking out for them, whether it was their parent or another washed up survivors. Is this what became of people who had nothing?

 

‘How casually terrifying,’ Negan thought, watching you wipe your hand of Jacob’s tears against your leggings idly. He’s tempted to tell you that they only usually kill one person from a new group as a rule of thumb, but he’d been known to break his own rule before. Negan had to admit that he wasn’t exactly specific, either. He’d more or less given you carte-blanche to do what you wanted because he wanted to see how you’d react. He’s too intrigued by whatever your decision-making process was, because he’d been just as surprised as Jacob was that he’d been spared.

 

“Ride with me on the way back,” he said suddenly and decisively, making you look up at him with a curious frown.

 

You passed his stupid little test though, so hopefully now you could accrue more of these ‘points’ and get yourself some cushy sleep. What could he need you for? That mental break (what else could you call it?) where you actually saw Darling’s face in someone else’s had to be a sign that you were too sleep-deprived and needed a marginally healthier pattern _desperately._ Fat chance of getting a truck-nap now, you sulked.

 

 

“I suppose I don’t actually have a choice, do I?” you asked rhetorically, only for him to match your words with a wide, toothy smile.

 

“You’re learning!” he chuckled “-you’re a cheeky little fuck, but you’re learning. Yeah, you’re with us doll, I think you’ve earned your spot.”

 

You frowned.

 

 _‘Really? That easily?’_ Your confusion doesn’t go amiss because usually he finds it so much harder to read you, so when the emotions are clear, he’s quick to call you out on them.

 

“Your technique,” he points out, glancing at the bolo handles before smiling down at you, smirking slightly at how easily he lorded over you with little effort. “-that shit is special. Most people can point a gun, but not many people can kill like that. It was…” actually, he wasn’t even sure what the right word was for that display. “-elegant.”

 

Ah, you mused, well if he thought you were just hacking walkers for the past couple of years with only a smattering of the living here and there, no wonder he’d been impressed. He had no idea that the choice murder of specific people that had wronged Idris had been blood sport.

 

“I should bloody well think after five years that I’d have it down to an art form,” you slip into casual braggadocio with ease, he doesn’t need to know that you’re very barely holding all of your marbles. Hells, you’d had a brief hallucinatory break and none of them had been the wiser. It’s enough that he knows you’re exhausted, and that makes you a little weak.

 

“Don’t waste a blow, if you can do something once, correctly, then do it,” you explained, feeling the burning stare of the other lieutenants on you now.

 

If they expected you to be shaken or uncomfortable by virtue of being younger than them, and “less experienced” as a result, they were highly mistaken.

 

“Most people are bigger than me,” you shrug again “-so a wasted move is a poorly planned one and it’s usually the difference between keeping your head attached to your neck or not,”.

 

“That a common worry where you’re from?” he’s fishing, despite his assured, cocky tones, the fact he actually knows very little about you is sneakily making itself apparent.

“It should be a common worry everywhere, people are bastards,” you brush it off, the last thing you needed to do was let them know how many enemies you had. You might be better off as a ransom if they’d known just how many people had suffered at the hands of the Kosovo and how many toes you’d had to step on over the years.

 

The U-Haul is emptied while you talk to Negan, not realising the time pass by as you did. It’s weird – having somebody this interested in getting to know you. Usually, your attitude was far, _far_ too off-putting for any _normal person_ to bother.

 

But then, you supposed – this Negan isn’t very normal, is he?

 

“Y’know, call it a wild feeling, but you’re not much of a people-person are you?” he chuckled.

 

“I’m barely even a person,” you can’t even _try_ to tame the sarcasm before it leaves you, and you’re thinly aware of the vaguely scandalised look that your flagrant disrespect gets you. You’re being sarcastic, of course, but he cannot help but wonder if there is a kernel of truth to it. He’d joked about the Grimes boy – Carl, being a “little serial killer” in the making for his dead-eyed expression in the face of a maiming and his general behaviour. But you? Were you like a window into his future, or something? What’re you going to be like a month, four months, a year from now?

 

‘ _I think this girl scares the shit out of me.’_

“I could believe that, because you are scary as shit! Hell if you could see what you looked like from the outside… I thought that kid was gonna piss all the way down his leg,” he paused, glancing at Jacob’s trembling form in the distance. “I wouldn’t have blamed him if he did.”

 

“Eugh, please. I know I have a high tolerance for bodily fluid and fleshy bits but I draw the line at piss,” you wrinkled your nose in distaste. “I _know_ it’s sterile and a _lot_ safer than infected blood but fuck me, I cannot deal with people pissing themselves.”

 

“Duly noted,” Negan grinned “-it’s nice to know you have a limit.”

 

You scoffed, you didn’t run away from it like a vampire from a crucifix, and decided to make it apparent that this was _not_ a weakness.

 

“If he’d pissed on my shoes, all three of them would be dead, or he’d be licking them clean. Soles and all. Don’t think I’m joking about that either,” you said darkly.

_‘Scratch that then, no known weaknesses_ ,’ Negan mused.

 

“You are fucking _icy,”_ he emphasises the last word, before walking and expecting you to follow in lockstep in the direction of he and Dwight’s shared truck.

 

“You have no room to talk, you carry a bat with barbed wire around it – her – “barely remembering he’d named the thing, just as you had done to your revolver. “- I highly doubt Lucille is used for hugging.”

 

“And you’d be right,” he grinned without missing a beat. “She’s about as antisocial as you,”.

 

You’d literally been compared to a weapon… and you’re not actually sure if you feel insulted or not – Idris would be beaming with pride.

 

“Thanks…” you frowned “I think? If that was a compliment,”.

 

Again, he doesn’t miss a beat.

 

“Being compared to my special lady is the greatest compliment you can get,” you’re surprised he doesn’t wink, and instead just swings his bat idly alongside himself. You have nothing to say to that, because you’re tired, irritated, and too worn out mentally to deal with much more. You’re not one for games, you can play them, you’ve seen them, but they leave a bitter taste in your mouth. There’s a hierarchy here and you don’t quite have your head wrapped around it yet, but there’s the boss, and lieutenants, then everyone else. Acting above your station isn’t going to sit well if you don’t act like you belong there, and exhibit strength when challenged.

 

Today had been a test, but there could be more to come.


	4. Left Wanting

Storms |||

**CHAPTER FOUR**

_“Left Wanting.”_

 

 

Dwight would be driving all four of you back to the Sanctuary, with Beans in seat adjacent. It looked a little odd at first, because it looked like Beans had taken Negan’s rightful place, until the back doors of the truck were pulled over with a loud, metallic groan and revealed a plush setup with a comfortable chair and a gratuitous amount of leg room. Naturally, the man rides in extreme comfort and style, so you’re not even surprised. It just strikes you as a bit over-cushy, and that the Saviors could probably benefit from nomadic travel, like the Kosovo.  _These people,_ you think –  _have had it far too easy._

 

Without question, you sit on the floor of the truck while he takes the chair and puts his bat betwixt his knees lazily. It seemed almost rude, taking the lush seating and leaving you to the warm, truck floor. If Negan was a smidgen more gentlemanly, he might have proffered it.

 

But he wasn’t.

 

The trip back is awkwardly silent once you climb in, like Dwight and Beans aren’t really sure what to say about your presence – so they say nothing. Negan is pleasantly surprised by your complacency, and watches you from his openly curious stare, watching as you yawn and arch your back, before wincing and steadily undoing the x-shaped harness across your chest. A heavy aching sensation travels through your spine, but mostly your upper back as you almost groan under the sensation of freedom from the sheathed machetes. They’re not overly heavy, but wearing them day in, day out, often for days and weeks at a time, many times falling asleep in them – it didn’t do your body good.

 

You drop the blades with an unceremonious clatter, grabbing your right shoulder and wincing noticeably. You’ve a high tolerance for pain, but you cannot remember the last time your back had ached quite so badly. It’s down to stress – probably Harry related, as most things tend to be.

 

“Doing alright down there?” Negan’s tone is deceptively kind, but you ignore it in favour of yanking your shoulder and twisting your back strangely until a series of disgusting clicks echo out from your bones. It doesn’t do much for the overall aches, but it relieves some of the hardest tension in your back.

 

 

“Carrying those day in, day out and sometimes sleeping with them is murder on the back,” you stretched your legs out in the truck, oddly thankful that you didn’t have to trail behind on Styx. Much as you loved that horse and had gotten used to the saddle, a day or two without one really did give the bones enough time to get accustomed to softer surfaces.  “-like horse saddles are murder on your arse. This is the first time in weeks I’m not doing either for the foreseeable,”. They already know you’re tired, but you’ve proven yourself enough today that you think you might be able to get away with some honesty.

 

Negan easily throws you for six with his blasé, oddly sexual tones.

 

“One of my wives is a masseuse,” he smirked “-give me your shoulders a second and I’m sure we can work through all that tension. I picked up a thing or two.”

 

It’s so out of left field that you’re not even sure where to mentally file it, even worse – he pats his lap like he expects you to get up and sit up on it for him to do so. You let out a strange sort of snort because you’re not sure whether to laugh or not and instead give the odd man a deeply sceptical look, falling back on your coarser nature instead. If that’s how Negan wanted to play it, you could too.

 

“Last time I let a man’s hands that close to my shoulders, he wrapped them around my throat,” you muttered – you weren’t sure how to dispel the odd, sexual remark, so instead you met it with biting harshness. “You’ll excuse me if I’m not jumping at the offer,” – that, and the size of Negan’s hands alone – you’re sure just the one could pick you by the throat and snap it like a baby bird’s. In truth, you don’t really know where you stand with the man. On one hand, he’d given you these new, snug clothes and didn’t tally it up as a debt to his points-based commune, on the other hand, your first introduction to him had been watching him melt strips off somebody’s face. On this expedition alone you met Dwight who had also met such a fate and that there were likely more people in the compound you haven’t met which had been on the receiving end of an iron. You eye him with sharp distrust and the more Negan learns about you, the more he can see why, and any niggling urge to put his boot down on your disrespect begins to wane ever so slightly.

 

“I don’t lay my hands-on women like that,” humour drops from his tone for a moment, as you give him a startled look. “-unless you’re into a bit of choking, we could probably work something out,”.

 

You give Negan a startled look. Out of everything he could have possibly said, the fact he allegedly didn’t put his hands-on women startled you more than the weird, sexual innuendo. What kind of man  _didn’t_ do that? You wanted to say, but it would probably betray far too much of your own beginnings if you did, but the look of scepticism doesn’t go amiss.

 

“You don’t believe me?” he raised an eyebrow, his tone naturally self-assured as he thinks he’s found an inn to find something new about you that he can press on.

 

“You’re a big, nasty fucker who irons his people’s faces in, pardon the hell out of me for not believing in your virtues,” you said, folding your arms over your chest. Beans frowned at your tone, he could see now why your tones toward the boss and others was a source of contention when hearing it for himself. It just reeks of a lack of respect, the sort of obstinacy that needed to be ground out – you’ve more balls than brains.

 

“I’m not that big of a bastard,” said Negan pointedly “-I don’t know about the shithole you came from but if you’re comparing me to your former boss, you’re in for a whole heap of surprises.”  Shit, he called you out, but you do your best not to react because he seems to relish in reactions. He doesn’t seem to be offended by your words either, as it’s an accurate descriptor.

 

Dwight looks up through the overhead mirror when you mention the iron branding, his eyes catching Negan’s for all of a moment but it’s long enough for him to deliver a subtle jab.

 

“As for the branding, I assure you doll, it could be much worse – and I don’t do it for fun. It’s their one strike, they fuck up again, then they’re out. I make my rules very fucking clear,” he doesn’t break eyes with the overhead mirror when he says it, as though silently daring Dwight to say something.

 

The blond wisely keeps his mouth shut, and turns away.

 

“Out of curiosity,” he pierced the awkward silence that followed “-what would  _your_ old boss have done if someone had broken one of his rules?” at your somewhat confused expression – as Idris had slim to no rules – he elaborates “-fuck one of his women, for instance.”

 

Idris was a possessive sort of man, it is one of many reasons he never liked your closeness with Darling much, so the answer to this wasn’t—well…shit, hadn’t something like this happened with Helton?

 

“He had me slit him from balls to throat,” your voice takes on a tired crackle, so you lean up against the gently vibrating truck walls as it rolled down the smooth, empty roads and closed your aching eyes. Why is he asking you this? Smalltalk? Why were you riding with him, anyway? What was wrong with sticking with Mark? You liked Mark.

 

Negan’s watching you quietly, and he’s not hiding it. He can detect the tired impatience rearing up constantly, and spies as you tuck your knees up to your chest, before resting your arms on them and your head atop them. In the dim lighting, he can see the dark circles around your eyes.

 

You clean up decently, he thinks. Your hair is a whole lot nicer when it’s not matted with mud and filth. It’s dark, soft and longer than he assumed it might be now that it was clean – could do with a brush, he mused. Your skin is a few shades lighter from having layers of dirt scrubbed off, making you look a bit more natural and a lot less washed out. The clothes make a difference, as does the lack of flesh shawl. The fact you’re cleaner and nicer looking than you’d been in months should be enough to convince you to stay, but it seems you’re not as easy to convince as ordinary women. After today, any doubt about your integration was erased quickly, and he’d seen it in the faces of his closest lieutenants to know they picked up on it too. You have a place here, everything about your manner of execution is fluid, and hard to rival. Moving with years of mastery behind your technique is much different to hacking someone down clumsily and without grace. He’s dying to see you in open combat, if only to sate his curiosity. It helped him decide though that he more than wanted you to stay. You’re young blood and you’re clearly promising at what you do, what he needs to do is convince you to stay. It seems the showers and bed weren’t enough on their own.

 

 _‘We’re keeping you,’_ Negan thinks, without even a passing thought to how arrogant the assumption is.

 

“Tired?” he keeps his tones deceptively gentle as he catches a little yawn slip out, it had to be your third one he’d noticed since you joined them on this outing. He didn’t think this was particularly boring work, so you really must be exhausted. “Didn’t you get any sleep, doll?” – he prefers calling you that to ‘Spider’ since you don’t fess up a birth name, and calling you ‘girl’ just seemed needlessly dehumanising. Doll, he thinks, might just suit your small self.

 

You, however, don’t trust his overfamiliarity and give him a withering look of irritation that could singlehandedly start another ice age. It’d be funny, if Negan wasn’t trying the ‘use honey rather than vinegar’ method of making you stay. Eugene had been easy, he reeked of cowardice and all he had to do was promise him security, but you? If someone told him you’d never been scared of anything your whole life, he’d believe it. You’re not so easy. It’s agitating to him as it is intriguing.

 

“I did not,” you ground out, because you rather thought it was stating the obvious, and you’re still abrasive.

 

“Just seeing if there was a problem,” Negan raised a single hand in mock surrender, drawing that slightly startled expression from you once more. “I’d like for you to be as comfortable as everyone else, that’s all.”

 

You don’t trust his motives he can tell, just from the look of disbelief and discomfort on your face. Alternatively, you could just be shitty with people trying to be nice to you, which is why you never turned off your “asshole” switch – which Negan could also understand.

 

“I, uh…” your voice warbles slightly as you try to temper your irritability, it was tiresome lashing out so much, and that dense fog that Darling had left you drowning in certainly didn’t help matters. You just want to take something strong and sleep until the stress works itself out of your back. Sleep until you feel fixed. Reorganise your thoughts. Regain some clarity, maybe. It’s just hard to do in new places and you were never good at dozing off even in the best conditions. “I don’t sleep good,” even the vulnerability of the admission sounds reluctant. Negan is surprised you don’t pout after the fact.

 

He isn’t sure what he makes of you.

 

“We gotta move you out of the bunks,” said Negan, shaking his head. “Doesn’t make sense having you with the rabble when you’re with the lieutenants - plus it smells like shit, right?” he smirked.

 

That fucker, he knew exactly how uncomfortable “the bunks” were, where all the lowlier Saviors slept. You hadn’t complained, considering you’d rode in on an emaciated horse and dragged guts everywhere in the process, but still.

 

“Like feet, arse and sweat if I’m perfectly fucking honest with you,” you replied, before feeling the truck jolt, drawing curses from everyone who wasn’t in the driver’s seat to see it coming.

 

“Fuck! Learn to drive Dwight, or did I toast out an eye too?” Negan snapped, referencing the burns that ate one side of his face.

 

“There was a bunch of corpses piled on the road, I kept avoiding but they’re gunking up the underside of the truck, anymore and we might turn over,” said Dwight irritably.

 

God. Fucking. Dammit.

 

“And here’s me thinking I’d get some fucking shut-eye,” you snarled under your breath as the truck came to a sudden stop, with Beans radioing Simon’s truck to let them know. Not in any rush to put the sheathes back on, you slide the blades out and sigh. It was pretty clear to you, tired or not, what had to happen next. Someone had to jack the truck and clear out the walkers underneath and keep an eye out for any roaming, undead trouble.

 

“Someone needs to ungunk the truck and it sure as shit isn’t me,” said Negan flatly “-Dwight, that’s on you, since you were driving, everyone else can fan out and keep out trouble.”

 

“Sure, if you want them to attract every undead citizen of Old Richmond,” you said, irritably, gesturing at Beans’ artillery.

 

“Loud guns while we’re stuck in place? Doesn’t sound like a good idea to me. Smart thing would be to switch trucks,” and to an extent, you’re right. Negan was already thinking about leaving this in Dwight’s hands and hopping into Simon’s truck, but no – it’s a potential loss of resource.

 

“And leave an armoured truck with a full tanker of gas for any old fucking asshole to take like Christmas come early? Nah, fuck that. We’ll get this shit moving. You’re right though – about the noise. I could get Simon to stop and back us up,” – until Dwight pipes up anyway.

 

“There’s an emergency at Hilltop, he’s detouring and flooring it, not sure about Arat, she’s not picking up,”.

 

Well, fuck.

 

“Alrighty, that leaves us with a small fucking problem,” Negan grumbled irritably. This was just poor planning on his part – but in his defence, it was supposed to be a quick sort of thing.

 

Yeah, it did leave you with a problem, you were further away from having your fucking nap in fucking peace. You get up while the men quibble pointlessly over their walkie talkies, placing the front of your boot to the centre of the truck doors and blow it open with an aggressive kick, leaving the left door swinging off its hinge as you spring out onto your feet.

 

“You guys all have knives right? Time to use ‘em!”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

_FOREST CLEARING_

**Location - Unknown**

 

 

Negan has a long, serrated dagger that’s almost the full length of his thigh strapped to his belt, but he’s happily wielding Lucille in his other hand, more than ready to knock some heads. Dwight focuses on the underside of the truck, so you turn to Beans, who’s standing unsurely and looking mildly displeased with his lack of gun.

 

“Oi, Beans,” you call him, before you realise he doesn’t know that you’ve mentally dubbed him that “-Beanie Guy,” you add – now  _this_ makes him turn around, putting him face to face with the handle-end of one of your bolos that you’re holding by the blade.

 

“Use this, and don’t fucking snap the blade. It’s a machete, not a sword, got it?” you said, not exactly happy with having to hand it over, but not willing to get killed over it through Beans’ not being properly armed.

 

“My name – “ said the man, grasping the handle tightly “-is Holden,” with irritation dripping from his tone. You blink slowly, before letting out a derisive snort. It was almost as stupid sounding as Darling.

 

“Yeaaaaah,  _no,_ that’s a stupid name _._  I’m calling you Beans,” you said flatly, raising a brow and daring him to challenge you. This earns you a laugh from Negan, whose a few paces behind, and it effectively silences Holden, who grumbles and moves the other side of the truck to keep watch. "Jesus fuck, was your mum still high on the epidural when she named you or what?" in truth, Holden isn't a  _terrible_ name, but you miss having a name you can make fun of, like you did with Harry. You're doing what you know, even if it results in a withered, displeased look. The cruelty does not go amiss by Dwight, whose half slid under the truck and occasionally pulling out loose strips of flesh - containing his disgust as a severed hand is tossed out from underneath and he begins to get tendrils of walker stuck under his fingernails.

 

“Fucking hell, you’re nice,” said Dwight sarcastically, half tucked under the truck.

 

“I’m a bit of a cunt,” you confirmed – not looking at him in favour of analysing the clearing ahead of you for any signs of roamers. “-On a good day anyway," - you wouldn't make any bones about pretending to be pleasant. You're a certain way because you'd rather not have people come to like you before you inevitably leave them in the dust, or vice versa. Negan gives you that analytical look again casually as he bumps Lucille over to his left shoulder. There’s something predatory that you don’t like about it, but you're uncertain about what to do about the gut feeling, so you decide to temper yourself just a bit when you're speaking to him in particular. 

 

You decide you don't trust Beans as much as you trust in Negan's ability to hold himself in open combat, so you make your way around the truck quietly, delicately stepping over the strew bits of walker that Dwight periodically seemed to toss out. Negan at least had a propensity for violence you were at least somewhat privy too, but Beans on the other hand, looked unsure when you'd thrust the machete into his hand.

 

"I'll watch this way with you, Negan's a big boy, he can look after himself," you say, knowing the man can hear you at the other side, while tacitly implying that Beans could not. The insult doesn't go over his head, but instead of looking annoyed, his expression is a little sheepish as he flips the machete in his hands.

 

"Is it that obvious?" Beans said with a frown as you moved to his side.

 

"Don't take it personally, I don't trust most people to defend themselves," you offered, you weren't actually trying to be rude this time. 

 

"Besides you looked like I asked you to lick clean a toilet when I handed you the thing, so I'm gonna wager you're not good at hacking down shamblers, yeah?" you gave him an opportunity to defend himself, but you liked to think you had a good read on people's capabilities. Beans had the good grace to look somewhat embarrassed, the truth of the matter is - he's used to having a gun. There isn't a time in the period of the Collapse where he'd ever been without one, and when he'd run out of ammunition, he'd used blunt force like throwing a chair or locking down a building and torching it from the outside, he wasn't one to get into close-range if he could help it and felt distinctly out of his comfort zone.

 

"Jesus fuck, I'm right aren't I?" you asked rhetorically, rubbing the back of your neck tiredly. The last thing the group needed was another liability while stranded in the middle of bumfuck-nowhere Virginia. "-How the fuck did you survive this long?" it's hard to keep the slightly aghast tone out of your voice - this guy must have had some serious,  _serious_ luck on his side. Existing this long in a world like this one without having to get up, close and personal was nothing short of a fucking miracle, or pure, utter, dumb luck. There's no other word for it.

 

"I'm a sharpshooter, okay?" said Beans irritably "-Ex-army, and was damn good at it too, I didn't  _need_ to be good at close range," he said with a short huff. Well, that explained how he managed to ascend the ranks as much as he had, and be a runner despite a complete lack of close combat skill, but surely they'd have trained him with a bit of that anyway, right? He's just lucky he's never had to  _use it_ against the dead, but if he's gone this long without having to keep his skills sharp - whatever they taught in the US army anyway - then it's no wonder he's not very comfortable with anything except shooting. 

 

"God - right, fine. Okay - " you said - pausing when you hear some twigs and leaves crunch a short distance away. It's a slow movement, so it's either people trying to be quiet, or more likely, walkers. 

 

"Sharpshooting, that's good. That's really fucking good. I'm alright with a bayonet but I prefer close range with a handgun. Bigger the gun, the slower I move, the slower  _anyone_ moves really, unless you're a big, strong, fast fucker. We gotta play to our strengths Beans, and I get that, but you seriously can’t expect it to stay so good and so fucking cushy that you don't get into close combat with those things," you thumbed in the direction of the walker as it began to shamble out, and hear Negan's footsteps begin to approach from the other side of the truck slowly.

 

Beans' eyes don't leave the walker, but when you finally turn around to face the source of the decayed, guttural groaning, you snort. Loudly.

 

"Hells bells, look at that fat bastard!" the walker had to be around 6"2 if he was probably around Negan's height, though he has none of the man's muscle and instead has an impressive gut, barely held up under the severe limp in its right leg. The foot on his right had twisted right the way around, causing the ankle bone to jut out and pierce through its soft, rotting flesh. He's balding, and quite putrefied, and from the looks of it, was some sort of a construction worker in his previous life, but you toss the sharpshooter a casual look, and smile.

 

"Alright, Beans. It's shambler killing class time. Look at its knees, yeah? It's a bit taller than you so if you don't want to go straight for the head that's fine, though for me it's more of a case of me being a fucking shortass with shitty reach. Not everyone is comfy with going overhead to go straight for the money-shot," you said rudely, not paying much mind to Negan's presence.

 

"You can kick them the fuck in to kneecap them or bend down and sweep with the knife if you're fast enough. I wouldn't advise it if you aren't quick though. So, knees, then head. Yeah? Knees, then head - and for the love of fuck don't let them grab your ankles. They're rotten shits but they've got a bloody grip on them," you glanced at the man and saw him uneasy, but nodding, and decide to move forward. You finally take note of the boss, whose leaning against the truck slightly, but make the choice to approach the large walker. The closer you get, the sharper the smell, and having had a few days when you're spared the trouble of having to wear your shawl, it's an unwelcome surprise. You'd really, honestly, forgotten how bad you must have smelled.

 

"Repeat after me, knees - and - head," you don't care if it's a childish and borderline insulting use of repetition, but Beans holds his tongue when you go out ahead and spare him the need to go first. 

 

"Knees and head, got it," he muttered, feeling ever so slightly emasculated by somebody half his age and height surpassing him.

 

You get a few paces from the walker, and stick your short leg out for its left knee, knowing its right is weak enough without help, you aim it with all the strength you can channel in your heel - just as you'd toppled Jacob, and quickly drove the blade upwards, though very little momentum was needed on your part as the man began to fall, all you had to do was get out of the way quickly enough, strafing further to its left before its weight would come crashing down on you. It was less of you driving a machete in an upper cutting motion and more of it falling on your blade, but you pushed it up anyway, exhibiting a hard strength as you felt its weight weigh heavy on your right hand when its head slid down to your hilt.

 

Not having quite the strength to keep the big man aloft, you're quick to put your left hand on the side of its head and quickly pull the bolo out with your right, letting him crash near your boots, his tongue rolling out onto your toes.

 

"See what I mean? If you bend to kneecap them with a knife and they're a big fuck or you're in the wrong place, they can get on top of you. You’re in trouble then," you said seriously, giving Beans a hard look. "But we're lucky to be in the south, it's hot as hell here and they're a lot softer than they could be as a result, so you’re a bit luckier. They come apart easier," you make a gesture with your head to the walker and move your foot, tilting its head so that it faced upwards instead of face down in the dirt. You give the man a come-hither gesture and miss when Negan thumps him hard in your direction. 

 

"So, if it's colder, you're saying they're tougher?" let it not be said that Beans wasn't a smart person, he was just a bit of a wary one.

 

"Yeah," you said, debating on how much information to give up. They weren't with you from the start, so they aren't privy to some of the more special facts you and the airport community way, way in the beginning had gotten to witness. You were part of those few people who got to watch those panicked news reports fly in from different corners of the world until each TV screen began to flicker and turn off, when each emergency station began to fall. You had gotten to watch the world go dark, one state at a time, one country at a time, and not everybody had that privilege. 

 

"Couple of years back when all this shit started, the reports from up north-west - I'm talking Alaska-far, they said they go down a lot harder. Cold makes 'em rot slower, see. So they're a lot stronger. Advice they gave was to not get in arm's length range of a shambler," you snorted "-whether it's a loved one or not. Fat lot of good it did them anyway. Alaska was one of the first places to go dark. But yeah, we're lucky. Look, look," you pull him close by his jacket without really noticing how rude the gesture is, making pointing gestures with the end of your machete.

 

"How do you know all that?" said Beans, only for you to wave it off. 

 

_Focus._

 

"Focus, I'm not fucking repeating myself," you said sharply. "I don't have to tell you a bite means you're fucked, doesn't matter how soft they get," he grimaces when you stick the end of your bolo into its mouth and prise open its lips so it's utterly slack-jawed, and gently tap the blade against the teeth. "Teeth are stronger than bones, unless you're lucky and they had shit teeth before they turned and they're a gummy bastard, you don't want those breaking the skin. yeah? But look - its neck. Its neck is as weak as the rest of it. Put your foot on it," your tone, authoritative.

 

Beans doesn't immediately do it, he just sort of pulls an expression of grim distaste before your tone gets sharp, and callous again.

 

"Fucking Christ, just  _do it,_ I'm trying to illustrate a fucking point here," you all but pinch the bridge of your nose in frustration, and move the machete out of its mouth to tap the ball of its throat. The man does as you ask, and then your smile turns slightly nasty when you look up at him, it instantly puts him at unease.

 

"Now stomp like you're trying to stomp out a flame. You only need to do it once if you do it right."

 

He stares at you for a moment, but withers under your expectant, unblinking gaze before bringing his foot down. He didn't apply as much force as he thought he should, but lets out a noise of surprise as the stem of the neck crackles under his foot like a soft, boiled snail shell, and snaps under the weight of his foot with incredible ease, severing the head from the body.

 

"They're  _weak,_ if you can't go for the forehead, go for the neck. They're fucking soft, but you are  _not._ You don't need to be scared of them, they're pathetic, how big they are does not matter a lick," your tone was unforgiving and sharp as Beans cringed and began wiping his heel against the ground, sending smears of bloody and fleshy matter across it in a long, dirty stripe.

 

"But hands, careful with them - see, some of them at this point have their fingernails rotted out, but not all of them, look," you gesture again with the bolo to its left hand, where its thumb and forefinger possessed its thicker nails. "-I don't need to tell you that the blood can kill you quick once it's in you. Shit's like if Aids and Influenza had a fucking baby and the baby was fucking genocidal. Clean. Your. Fucking. Shit after," it's why you wore a shawl and put an extra barrier between your walker guts and your body, and made a point of keeping track of your more open cuts. "-but the hands? Fingernails? Lower risk chance, but still a chance. You get a scratch, you may live, depends how deep it is though," you make a point of putting your left leg against a nearby tree and quickly roll up your leggings to show a none too deep scratch, which was a long, scarred "L" shape.

 

"I had one grab me once, fingernail broke off against me and hung there but cut too deeply. Doused it in some Grey Goose a few seconds after and plucked it out - this was a few years back - covered it up and didn't catch the fever. Scratches are a luck game, not everyone's lucky enough to pour vodka on it and call it a day. But you've got a better chance surviving, my advice is to just not let them grab you in the first place. Keep moving, move as much as you fucking can even if you don't have a lot of places to go. They're dumb as fuck and trip over themselves most of the time if you do that," you roll the legging back down when you feel the intensity of more than Beans' eyes and move your foot back down off of the bark.

 

"That's not a concern in your world usually but if you're dealing with these things all up close and personal than you should know the ins and outs. I mean, I suppose if you're that scared you can chop their hands or arms off, but don't just hack blindly, you'll have them still crawling about if you're not careful," you gesture to a skinnier, shorter walker, which was blindly dragging itself in no particular direction.

 

"Go get that one, I’m going to go walk the perimeter a bit. S’kinda fucking weird for there to be only be two of them. Might be more,” you said.

 

“Wait,” Beans furrowed his brow “-you’re just gonna leave me?”

 

You look at the smaller walker, then at the ex-army Savior and let out a disbelieving noise.

 

“Jesus fuck, do you expect me to hold your hand or something? Come on army boy, go earn your stripes,” you said, before turning and leaving him edging towards the walker apprehensively.

 

You’re not being nice, but you’re being more than accommodating in your humble opinion. Beans must be a fucking exceptional sharpshooter and general rifleman to get this far into the end of the world and not have to hack a walker to pieces. A small part of you feels strangely resentful for that. It’s not that it troubles you much to kill them, in truth, you’d gotten over it fairly quickly in your youth, it’s more that he’d been in such a position where it wasn’t needed in the first place, but for five years all _you’d_ done is toil in blood and dirt to make your living. Sparing your time and offering techniques to Beans had filled your nice quota for the day, heading into the trees somewhat to walk the perimeter of the truck clearing would at least get you away from him before he managed to annoy you even more without meaning to.

 

For a few moments, you get some blissful peace as leaves and branches brush your naked arms while the smell of the walkers began to fade. Typically, it does not last – as when does it ever? You’re quick to turn your heel at the sound of a twig snapping under the thick weight of a human body and draw your bolo up cautiously, only to drop your arm lazily when you see it’s Negan.

 

“Not keeping an eye on Beans?” your tone is sharp and dismissive, as though you’re telling him exactly what he _should_ be doing, but if it bothers him, he doesn’t let on.

 

“He can handle himself, he wouldn’t be here if he couldn’t,” said Negan, rather confidently “Besides, you gave him a good rundown on what to do,”.

 

You don’t respond to the praise, instead giving him an assessing look. There isn’t really anything you have to say to the boss, unless he has something to do about how you performed today. He must have had a reason for having you ride with him, after all. It occurs to you that you should lessen the attitude just a bit, especially as this man was responsible for where you'd end up sleeping, and it seems he's intent on convincing you to stay but, the ball wont stay in your court if you remain permanently disagreeable. 

 

 

“Right,” your tone suggests you don’t know if you believe him, but denotes polite lip-service. Negan takes that as a small win, because that’s still more respect than you’ve cared to show anybody else thus far.

 

Truth be told, he’d hung back and watched you talk through the ins and outs of close combat and found your methods to be sharp, and your teaching skills needed some work. Your people skills in general, Negan thought – were kind of abhorrent, but there is no denying your field of expertise now. Your techniques seem almost ironclad, and he’s more impressed than he’d want to openly admit. He’s assessing you, as though searching for something, some sort of humanity – that desperate, kindling need for somewhere warm. Warmth, safety, human companionship. All of the things that made humans so easy and malleable to work with, manipulatable humanity.

 

Negan searched for it, and found you wanting.

 

 _‘And I thought Carl was bad,’ –_ it’s a hysterical sort of thought, the kind that’d follow a deranged giggle, but he somehow keeps himself from doing it. It’s only when your clipped tones address him that he realises he’s done nothing but walk beside you silently, studying your face in deep contemplation.

“Did you need something?” your brows furrowed “-is there somethin’ on my face?”.

 

No other Savior would have called him on it, they’d have kept their mouths shut and kept on walking. Nobody questioned Negan’s behaviour, or his motives, or anything really – he was not one to stand for it, so it’s jarring enough to snap him out of his thoughts.

 

“No,” he said bluntly.  “There’s a reason I asked you to come with us, though,”.

 

Yeah, you figured, and supposed he might want to talk about how you made your choice at the gas station. It had surprised everyone, even yourself. The teenager was fully expecting to die and that is exactly what you’d been trying to steel yourself to do before those niggling feelings of dissent and Harry -fucking- Darling came bubbling forward. You could hardly explain that, could you?

 

“How quick that couple was – back at the gas station, to hand over their brat. It just sort of… rubbed me the wrong way, if that’s what this is about,” – Negan mentally files that away, because he had been curious but that wasn’t what he wanted to ask you.

 

“Yes and no,” he said casually “-I just wanted to talk, is all.”

 

Talk? If you wanted to talk, you’d have been better off with Mark, Jared or hell, even Beans. You didn’t have much to say to the boss, but common sense told you that if you kept on pushing your luck, it would eventually run out, and so you need to at least humour the man.

 

Or maybe Negan’s just humouring _you._

“So talk,” you didn’t even mean to sound so clipped and rude this time, and wince a little when you realise you don’t actually know how to turn off your abrasiveness. It was more that people – the Kosovo – and Darling, had just gotten _used_ to it.

 

“Testy,” Negan remarked “-that shit right there. Most people don’t talk to me like that, or if they do, they don’t get away with it.”

 

You frown, he doesn’t sound angry but you cant read his tone.

 

“Sorry?” you said. You’re not sorry at all, it’s more of a high-inflection ‘I don’t know why I’m apologising but I’m doing it to cover my bases’ sort of noise and it’s enough to make the man crack a wide grin. It’s not even that you’re just a rude little woman, Negan realises, you just don’t seem to _know better –_ and that changes everything. Punishing you for that sort of obstinacy now seems like the equivalent of pistol-whipping a blind kid. Not that he contemplated doing it much after finding himself strangely charmed by it, any passing thought to it seemed to dwindle by the moment.

 

 _‘She just doesn’t know any better. Even Carl knows better, and does it anyway. That’s what makes him a little badass. Or a dumbass. Subjective shit, really,’_ Negan mused.

But you?

 

“Don’t do that shit, you’ll ruin the image I have of you,” Negan continues to smile. It makes you uncomfortable for reasons a little unclear to you.

 

“O…kay then,” Idris isn’t like this, he’d give you a withering look that screamed ‘ _hold your tongue before you find yourself without one’_ so Negan utterly confuses you with very little effort. His method of honey over vinegar regarding you doesn’t set off alarm bells as severely as The Kingdom had, but it still left you feeling a little out of your depth.

 

“I just wanted to talk, get to know you a bit,” you’re an oddity, you suppose – but it puts you on guard. What could he possibly want to know? Then it hits you, he’d been privy to your impromptu Shambler Killing 101 session so your detailed knowledge of the world prior to The Collapse probably raised some interest. This makes you relax – because you can work with that. It’s a reasonable assumption, nothing nefarious, you hope.

 

So, when he finally poses his question – it throws you for six, and your mouth opens dumbly. It’s the shock reaction Negan thirsts for, and he didn’t even have to curse you out to do it.

 

“What do you miss?” he says, making you fall silent and give him a completely gormless expression that he fucking _revels_ in. He’s cracked the indomitable mask and he didn’t even need Lucille to do it. You go silent, before schooling your features into a blank expression.

 

Is he out-and-out asking for your Achilles heel? Is he looking for your weakness, unable to find it and simply asking for it on a silver platter? Does he expect you to say ‘mummy and daddy’ then wax lyrical about your past? Everyone had one, and everyone lost everyone. Is that what he’s looking for? Just to whet his curiosity? Find out what made you such a grumpy bastard because you’re a _novelty_ of a bleak sort?

 

The answer is so much simpler.

 

“I mean, before this whole shitshow,” he waves his free hand in the general direction of some strewn guts that Dwight had tossed from the underside of the truck. He’d walked you back to the start – before you’d ventured off into the forest perimeter, but kept you a small distance from the truck, away from the other man hearing. “Before dead people came back and shit hit the fan.”

 

He wants you to stay, doesn’t know how to make you, and so he’s simply asking. Could it be that simple? You don’t need to give him a deep and nuanced answer, he hasn’t asked you for one. Hell, even if Harry had asked you, the pair of you in the span of five years very rarely discussed the people you left behind from the Old World in the airport community. This was something you kind of hated about people older than you. The way they told stories about how the world used to be as though that’s the only form human progression could ever take. They looked at this unforgiving world and all they saw were ashes. Empires spent years and decades rising and falling and true, humanity classing itself as one as a whole and collapsing entirely is the biggest challenge humans have ever faced. It’s an extinction-move, a kill all, a one-hitter like the annihilation of the dinosaurs or the fucking ice age. Yet, things came along _afterwards_ just as survivors had come along afterwards, crawling out from the gutters. The world kept moving, evolving and pushing. The world hadn’t _ended._

Someone just hit _reset._

_‘When will these old bastards realise that and stop trying to make things into how they were before? How they were before is why everyone’s dead! We should be **better** than we were before or we had no right to be here in the first place’. _Fuck the ‘Meek inheriting the Earth’ bullshit, humans were constantly at the precipice of true innovation, and then the world fucking _ended_ and the innovators _died._ You feel yourself losing hope a little more, and feel yourself just a little more convinced to move on and leave the Saviors in your dust.

 

“I thought you’d be smarter than to ask stuff like that,” it’s not a threat, in fact, there’s a put-out sort of disappointment in your tone that makes the man feel like he’s done something wrong without realising. He cannot for the life of him figure out what that could be either, besides perhaps being too blunt and personal, and yet your sharp nature told him you much preferred people cutting to the chase, and so he is confused but refrains from showing it.

 

Before Negan can reply, you turn and give him an answer that manages to leave him almost as dumbstruck as his initial question had left you.

 

“Hotdogs. I miss hotdogs,” you acquiesce to that, because there’s plenty of luxuries you’d rather you had that even as a child and a young teenager, you had been exposed to before The Great Collapse. “I lived near a stadium, so every time there was a game all of the vendor vans would come out. Grabbing a hotdog with everything on it and cheese fries was my favourite thing. That’s what I miss.”

Shit, he expected _‘my parents’, ‘my dog’, ‘my boyfriend’,_ hell even the monotony of school was something he knew could be appreciated in such a tumultuous time, especially for someone who’d probably been so young when all this shit started.

 

You gave him a sort of cocky look, a bit smug that you’d manage to leave the man floundering slightly, because Negan does not _flounder._

“Why, what’d you expect me to say?” you snort derisively, as though any other answer except hotdogs-with-cheese-fries was utterly wrong and anyone would be a fool to suggest otherwise. If he really wanted to know you for whatever reason, he was certainly going about it in a clumsy, graceless way.

 

“I dunno. A normal answer. I mean fuck – hotdogs are fucking great – I could fucking murder a coney now you mention it but shit doll, most people say their family or their friends or whatever,” he said lazily.

 

Oddly, he doesn’t seem disappointed by your answer just bemused, and curious. Getting Negan curious was a bad thing. You’re in his line of sight now – and if you’d have asked anyone, you’d have been readily told that it’d be much harder to leave, and there is no way you would ever go unnoticed now.

 

When Negan looks, _everyone looks._

“Piss on that, family I can live without, but a good hotdog is as close to heaven as my ass is gonna get.”

 

Negan doesn’t bother to keep the hysterical chuckle in this time. It could just as well be a joke and he could appreciate the banter but there's something chilling underlying the surface of your comment that makes the hairs on his arms want to raise. There's that blankness again on your face even when you smile that looks like it's been cut and pasted clean off one of his more grizzled and despicable men. It simply doesn't look  _right_ on such a such a sweet face, he thinks. Everything about you is antithetical and wrong. You're a fighter despite your frame, there is power in your movements that bring down dead twice your size and then some. There's a maturity that takes decades to grow because the New World dictates that you grow up faster or don't have the luxury of growing up at all. You should be keening for protection and yet you don't, you should want to be kept safe, but you hold too strongly to the idea of nobody being able to keep anybody safe anymore to even give him half a chance. You smile when you joke, but it fails to reach your eyes. The implication in your tone is clear. A hotdog is as close to heaven as you're going to get because  _the things you've done, could do, will do_ \- leave the precious notion of paradise a complete joke. In a way, it's like a big part of you is already dead. Would this be the future now? Negan didn't want that. He wanted to reshape the world so that one day, people could hope in it again. Hope, live, flourish, innovate, _improve._ He isn't even sure why he fucking bothers most the time. People are pissants and cowards and crybabies, but if they aren't, then God-fucking-dammit - are you the only other alternative? People like you, Negan, and Rick? God, fuck. Negan hopes not. 

 

‘ _Yeah. You scare me. you scare the piss outta me. Jesus fucking Christ you're a goddamn psychopath, aren't you? Shit. Yeah. Dead behind the eyes. Shame, they're fucking pretty eyes. Wasted on you.'_ \- the latter isn't even a spiteful thought. Just an oddly mournful one.

 

 It would be nice to have a world where gentle things could grow, and the weak could survive, and Negan is just arrogant enough to think he can be the man to do that.

 

_Someone has to._

 

"Guys - I cleared the truck!" Dwight mercifully cuts through the tension, and just like that, the thickness in the air seems to drain.

 

Negan makes you palpably uncomfortable.

 

You have yet to figure out why.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
